When we develop lessons, we always try to keep our school’s mission in mind, and strive to create curricula that develop students’ international consciousness, helping them make connections across disciplines, languages, and cultures.
This fall, our 3rd grade class began a unit on Native Americans that evolved into something much broader, as we investigated indigenous peoples throughout the world. Using inquiry learning in both English and Chinese, students were able to think critically and on a global scale.
Students expanded their thinking by studying indigenous groups from different parts of the world. We rotated through stations to read books about indigenous groups from India, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Polynesia, Russia, and the United States. With post-its, students wrote down inquiry questions about these different groups, creating an interactive post-it display in the classroom.
Because INTL is a bilingual school, we were able to add a second level of inquiry to our unit by making connections between languages. During our weekly collaborative meeting, we made a connection knowing that students were studying continents and landforms in Chinese class.
Students observed, recorded their findings, and shared what they noticed and knew about maps and globes. With exposure to various resources, students guided themselves toward deeper inquiry. The reflective questions they wrote helped them think about what they didn’t yet know and what they wanted to learn.
To reinforce students’ mapping skills, we used Google Earth to virtually locate continents and oceans. We also located INTL and recognized the configuration of a city (Palo Alto), within a state (California), within a country (USA), on a continent (North America), on the Earth. By navigating with Google Earth, students solidified their spatial sense and reinforced their knowledge of cardinal directions.
We also had the exciting opportunity to take a field trip to the Recology Center, where students learned about reducing, reusing, and recycling. While there, students collected various recycled materials and used their imaginations to create landforms in a shoebox, labeling all the landforms in Chinese.
As an old adage says: “Tell me and I forget, show me and I remember, involve me and I understand.” Using inquiry learning in our multidisciplinary indigenous peoples/world geography unit, students became very engaged in finding answers to their own questions, actively constructing knowledge and taking ownership of their own learning.
*In 2020, the International School of the Peninsula (ISTP) formally changed its name to Silicon Valley International School (INTL) to better reflect its bilingual programs, location, and international values.