by Ashlee Kaminski, Grade 3 Teacher, and Priya Deorukhkar, SK Teacher, TK Campus -

What happens when you find natural material like bamboo in your backyard? What happens when you are able to collaborate with other teachers across Grade levels? An exciting learning journey, one that involved our Senior Kindergarten (SK) and Grade 3 students at CIS TK Campus!

After learning that our units of inquiry (UOI) intertwined nicely in SK and Grade 3, we were excited to start a collaboration between our classes. We started sharing ideas on how learning could be exchanged, made adjustments for different learning levels, and created a plan to work together.

Grade 3 students were investigating how the world works, with a central idea of “many factors need to be considered during the process of creating a structure”. Within the same UOI, SK students focused on the central idea “characteristics of materials determine how people use them”. We planned a series of lessons where SK and Grade 3 students could learn together, while providing Grade 3 students with a leadership role, and SK with an opportunity to collaborate and work with older students.

Later, as SK students were creating stories about the Three Little Pigs, Grade 3 were also able to contribute to this learning engagement. We worked together to group different materials that could be used to build houses, then, to add a twist and a literature component, we read The “True Story of the Three Little Pigs,” from the wolf’s perspective. The Grade 3 and SK students divided into groups and set about exploring the materials to build houses for the pigs, of course. The big, bad wolf was around school somewhere just waiting to come and blow these houses down!

The children explored different materials, such as bamboo sticks, straws, toothpicks, popsicle sticks, sugar cubes and lego, to build houses with. Active thinking, expressing themselves, researching and building on social skills were evident results of these sessions, as ideas were shared, applied, and modified. Both SK and Grade 3 students competently used unit vocabulary when explaining concepts during the design process and as they built the houses. Grade 3 students spoke about the importance of using a solid base or foundation, and this resounded with SK students. Action was visible when, back in class, SK students applied this same understanding as they built their own structures for their summative task. They actively spoke about the importance of using and building houses on a strong base.

Not all builds were successful. However, the learning that was achieved through the process of reflection, what could be done differently next time to make the structure stable, was invaluable. It has been evident to both grade’s teachers as they see students working through their summative tasks, that this learning engagement helped to extend their learning throughout the unit.