How the World Works

Natural events influence life which can be observed, measured and explained

What’s up the EARTH?

Tune into this unit, students are encourage to see what’s going on in earth recently. I put a big world map on board, along with some news related with natural events that happens around the world.

Almost every morning we visit the board and ask them to keep updating news at home through TV, newspaper, internet and other media.

Students were so excited to see the facts that really happened in certain places, such as landslide in west java, flood in most of places in Indonesia, Monsoon in India, or El Nino in Phillipine and snowstorm in Newyork and California, US. This learning engagement is also to related to the previous unit Where We are in Place and Time, where students has learnt about map, countries, and cities.

I usually record the news on TV that I watched, and show them in the classroom.

Students identify different characteristic of 4 seasons as their first formative assessment through decorating class. They list down the characteristic and make it as a class decoration.

Lines of inquiry:

Natural events related to weather and seasons
How natural events can be observed and explained
The influence of natural events to human lives

A Provocation:

A provocation is an activity set up by the teachers to encourage students’ thoughts, discussions, questions, interests, creativity and ideas. It also can expand on a thought, project, idea and interest.

In our current unit, students are learning about Natural events, such as day and night, weather and seasons. As all students are different, they have their own prior knowledge and different learning styles, so teachers

should accommodate their needs, and get them to tune into the unit in different ways.

It is set up in the classroom to encourage them becoming an inquirer and knowledgeable. Students usually ask questions related with the unit, and also answer their friends’ questions. After a week, I also can put a trigger questions each week, so that students could be challenged to find the answers.

This board is visited by students every morning before starting the class, or those who are the earlier finisher can deal with this board, too. I usually visit and find the answer together with students before starting lesson once a week. I could read a book related with the questions they ask there, or play a movie related, so that students can build their own meaning or find the answer of their own questions by themselves.

Classroom Questions Board

Students also can write any new vocabularies that they know from the learning process. Then display it, so the others can also see when they can't spell correctly.

Students observe the weather in a week. After observing together on the first day, then they fill in the chart every morning (during their break time 09.00 am) and afternoon (during their lunch time at 12.00) independently.

They observe how the cloud looks like, the amount of sun rays, and measure the temperature, too. I put the thermometer outside the class window, so students can access to see it every morning and afternoon by themselves.

This chart is used to see the pattern of weather in Surabaya recently, and they need to accomplish their task to make a line graph of temperature in Math lesson, and to make a journal and forecast report in Bahasa Indonesia lesson.

WHAT’S NEXT IN THE CLASSROOM

SOLID LIQUID GAS

Students learn about matter in this unit. They review different matters and the change of matter because of heat energy and freezing process. In math, they learn about temperature that related to 4 different seasons in earth.

Observing the position of sun in different time. Students may bring the book home to observe the sun position at their go home time and evening when the sun set.

Since their learning about the wind direction in math, they also need to observe the position of their shadow in certain time depends on the sun position.

Observing the drying sock process. Students can see how long their sock can dry because of the evaporation.

Earth rotaion

and

earth revolution

WATER CYCLE EXPERIMENT

Students learn the concept of Change and connection, so students learn to identify the change happens in matters, and connect it to how the world works in the atmosphere.

They got sme knowledge about the fact of earth and the atmosphere. What happens above the earth, and the temperature, such as cloud, snow, cold temperature and rain.

I dig their prior-knowledge about water cycle by offering them an experiment. Some of them cpuld connect it with their prior-knowledge about changing matters “evaporation”. They has came up with the idea that water can turn into gas, then go up to the sky becoming cloud, and turns into rain or snowflakes.

This is a trigger for them to think of the materials and equipment needed to do the experiment. They know that to make the water evaporate, it need heat energy that can come from stove.

Students watch some video to learn more about the processes’ name.

EVAPORATION

CONDENSATION

PRECIPITATION

COLLECTION

Going Further to deepen understanding on students' interest

Students need to explain the impact of extreme weather to living things especially human lives. I asked them to work in partner or small group according to their interest. They worked together by researching the information from internet.

At the end, students could share their findings to others. I did the Gallery Walk, so each of them can take note the information from their friends’ findings.

Photo of Gallery Walk

In Bahasa Indonesia, instead of learning about new related vocabularies,

students are required to make a journal using bahasa INDOENSIA. This assignment helps students to develop their vocabularies related with the unit, such as:

bumi, awan, angin, temperatur or suhu udara, petir, kilat

dan lain-lain.

By writing a journal, students are expected to develop their grammar in making sentences using those relate words.

The understanding about the concept of cause and effect related with how the world works are being assessed in this journal, too. Students learned how to describe weather in Surabaya, especially in the area of CItraland. They observed the weather in Citraland every morning and afternoon. They have recorded the data in a special book, called DAILY WEATHER OBSERVATIN BOOK.

In Bahasa Indonesia journal, students needed to add more information about weather prediction and suggestion for others to be prepared on certain weather.

Weather Report Program on TV.

In the end, students reported their journal in form of Weather Report Program on TV. They needed to add the report by including graph of the temperature in a week, and the cause and effect on possible extreme weather in Surabaya recently.