Getting Started in Where We Are in Place and Time

Students in grade 5 started their new unit under the theme of Where We Are in Place in Time.

As a getting started activity, students browsed through a variety of books on ancient civilisations and made a note of any questions or wonderings.  In small groups we sorted our questions into 3 categories: inquiry questions, thin questions, or somewhere in between the two.  Students brainstormed characteristics of each type of question.

We decided that inquiry questions are:
Debatable, have many possible answers, are good topics for discussions, and you must synthesize a lot of information when answering them.

Here is a preliminary list of sorted questions.

After browsing more books and watching a short video on the rise of civilisations, students added to their list of questions and looked at the questions from the lens of our key concepts and lines of inquiry. Students decided which concept best matched their question and which line of inquiry it would help to explore.

Among other things, students began to investigate the local features that aided a civilisation's growth.
In conjunction with our earlier book browse, students also made note of important places they uncovered and added them to a class list. Using Google Earth, we took a virtual tour (first stopping at our own houses) of a variety of ancient ruins and locations.


Students ended the week with a field trip to the Yokohama History Museum.  This site was being developed for residential housing in the 1980s when scientists discovered the remains of a community dating back over 2000 years. This marks the transition in Japanese history to a more sedentary and agriculturally based society.  It was a great opportunity for students to see replica dwellings and actual tools that were used during this time. Students also got to witness the huge change in lifestyle that came with the advent of agriculture.

Here are a few photos from the day.