Planning the inquiry

1. What is our purpose?

Class/grade: Grade 3

1a) To inquire into the following:

School: Domuschola International School

transdisciplinary theme

Title:

How We Express Ourselves

Teacher(s): Ginalyn, Bea, Carmina, Brenn, Dean

An inquiry into the ways in which we discover and express ideas, feelings,
nature, culture, beliefs, and values; the ways in which we reflect on, extend and
enjoy our creativity, our appreciation of the aesthetic.

Date: September 15 to October 20, 2015

Age group:
School code: 7800

Messages

Proposed duration: 48 hours over 6 weeks

central idea
People can create or manipulate messages to target specific audiences.

1b) Summative assessment task(s):

2. What do we want to learn?

What are the possible ways of assessing students understanding of the central
idea? What evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?

What are the key concepts (form, function, causation, change, connection,
perspective, responsibility, reflection) to be emphasized within this inquiry?

Goal: To inform children about the things that they need to consider when
choosing or playing digital/online games
Role: Information Disseminators (Students)

Focus Key Concepts: function, perspective, reflection

Related Concepts: media, advertising, propaganda

What lines of inquiry will define the scope of the inquiry into the central idea?

Audience: Students of Domuschola and Uranbo Elementary School

Scenario: You discovered that there are positive and negative things that digital
and online games bring to students like you. As a result of your learning in this
unit, you are going to inform the students of Domuschola and
Uranbo Elementary School the things that they need to consider when choosing
or playing online games in their computers and gadgets.

Come up with a song, a poem, a poster, or a short story that could send this
message to them.
Product: A song, a poem, a poster or a short story

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How media(images, text and music) is used to influence behaviour of target

audiences
Critical evaluation of messages presented in the media
How people respond to messages

What teacher questions/provocations will drive these inquiries?

How do media influence our behavior?

How do we perceive messages?
How do we evaluate messages presented in media?

Planning the inquiry

3. How might we know what we have learned?

4. How best might we learn?

This column should be used in conjunction with How best might we learn?
What are the possible ways of assessing students prior knowledge and skills?
What evidence will we look for?

What are the learning experiences suggested by the teacher and/or students to
encourage the students to engage with the inquiries and address the driving questions?

Students watch a well known tv commercial. They will tweak the commercial to
attract different audiences,
What are the possible ways of assessing student learning in the context of the
lines of inquiry? What evidence will we look for?
Line of Inquiry

What will be assessed?

How will evidence be collected?

How media(images, text

and music) is used to
influence behaviour of
target audiences

-Media affects the way

people respond to
messages it convey.

Students write an essay or create a

write up how media influence
audience. They may take or focus on
one form of media at a time and
explain how it influences an
audience.

Critical evaluation of
messages presented in the
media

-There is a need to critically

evaluate the messages
presented in the media.

Students will be given images, music,

ads and text. They will use a fourcolumn table where they will show an
organized evaluation of these media.
They will cover positive and negative
aspects of the presented media.

How people respond to

messages

-Media can impact how

people respond to
messages.

Students will watch a video and

analysis how will the video impact the
audience in different ages.

Tuning-in:
Students are exposed to posters, book covers, poems, songs and videos. Students analyze:
a. the feeling/emotions it tries to relay
b. the possible messages it tries to send
c. the authors purpose of using the media
d. the possible audiences
Meaning of symbols- Students list down all possible and familiar meaning of symbols that we usually see,
eg dove, cross, skull.
Students watch advertisement videos. Students are given specific audiences and they give suggestions on
how to manipulate the advertisement to suit the given audience.
Using the same advertisement videos, students think of possible responses to the message of the videos.

What opportunities will occur for transdisciplinary skills development and for the
development of the attributes of the learner profile?
A. Transdisciplinary Skills
Thinking Skills:

Analysis-students analyze the message behind the songs, artwork, posters, ads and covers that
will be presented to them.

Evaluation- students determine the significance of media in sending different messages to people.
Social Skills:

Group decision - making - students

Cooperating - students work with other members of the class in every engagement.
Research Skills:

Observing - students observe how different media send different messages to people

Planning - students consider the most effective medium before sending messages
B. Learner Profile

communicators - students try to send different messages using different media

caring - students consider others opinion during the engagement.

5. What resources need to be gathered?

What people, places, audio-visual materials, related literature, music, art, computer software, etc, will be available?
LITERATURE

Different book cover

AUDIO-VISUAL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5qZedMTkkE (Dove Evolution)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9LGBBWTGgk (Coca Cola Happiest Thank You)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1j6YA03hm4k (Words Hurt)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgMNRbk_h2o (Air Pollution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc7SMQ5U9KM (Drinking and Driving))

OTHERS

Poems, songs

How will the classroom environment, local environment, and/or the community be used to facilitate the inquiry?
Classroom displays include posters, editorial cartoons,signs and symbols, songs, poems and stories that may send different messages.
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Reflecting on the inquiry

6. To what extent did we achieve our purpose?

7. To what extent did we include the elements of the PYP?

Assess the outcome of the inquiry by providing evidence of students understanding

of the central idea. The reflections of all teachers involved in the planning and
teaching of the inquiry should be included.

What were the learning experiences that enabled students to:

Realizations given by the students are actually equivalent to the central idea even
though the central idea was not revealed to them the entire time. Some of the
realizations are: Messages can be tweak or change to suit different audiences and
messages can be change to address the situation and needs of different
audiences.
Engagements were really rich because they were planned well to target its
purpose. Planning regularly played a great role in letting the students understand
the central idea.
How you could improve on the assessment task(s) so that you would have a more
accurate picture of each students understanding of the central idea.
The assessment tasks should have been more focused into the concept of
manipulation of messages. This should have been more emphasized in order for us
to have a clearer assessment on whether the students have an in-depth
understanding of the central idea.
What was the evidence that connections were made between the central idea and
the transdisciplinary theme?
Students understood that they could express the same idea or message, feelings to
different audiences. They also extended their creativity in tweaking commercials to
attract different audiences. They also applied that same understanding in doing
their summative assessment, an action to inform students about the considerations
that they need to have before buying or purchasing online games.

develop an understanding of the concepts identified in What do we want to

learn?
Function: the students understood the function of media in influencing the
behavior of different audiences through the engagements that we had using the
different ads like the evolution, drinking and driving, air pollution and words hurt.
They also understood the different function of the different media that we use in
sending messages.
Perspective: Interviewing their relatives about the reasons why we need to
evaluate messages presented in the media and about the reasons why people
responds to messages differently gave them the opportunity to understand the
concept of perspective.
Reflection: Students learned the importance of reflection when they experienced
evaluating different media and came up with considerations that they need to
have as consumers.
demonstrate the learning and application of particular transdisciplinary skills?
Thinking Skills:

Analysis-students analyzed the message behind the songs, artwork, posters, ads and covers
that were presented to them.

Evaluation-students evaluated the messages both hidden/discreet and literal, from the videos,
posters and online games that they focused on.
Social Skills:

Group decision - making - students collaborated each time that they have a small group
discussion about a single idea that they needed to share to the entire class to represent

Cooperating - students work with other members of the class in every engagement.
Research Skills:

Observing - students observed how different media send different messages to people by
experiencing it themselves

Planning - students planned what media are they going to use in order for them to send the
message about the considerations that children should have before purchasing or playing an
online game.

develop particular attributes of the learner profile and/or attitudes?In each case,
explain your selection.

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communicators - students interpreted and evaluated the messages that they see in the posters,
videos and commercials.
caring - students considered others opinion during the engagement.

Reflecting on the inquiry

8. What student-initiated inquiries arose from the learning?

9. Teacher notes

Record a range of student-initiated inquiries and student questions and highlight any that
were incorporated into the teaching and learning.

A strategy that help my class understand the lines of inquiry was asking the parents to
explain the concept to them as part of their homework. It even increased the rate of
participation since most of them do their homework.

Why do we need to evaluate messages?

Why do we respond to messages differently?
At this point teachers should go back to box 2 What do we want to learn? and highlight the
teacher questions/provocations that were most effective in driving the inquiries.
What student-initiated actions arose from the learning?
Record student-initiated actions taken by individuals or groups showing their ability to reflect,
to choose and to act.
After the unit, students became more aware of the things that they should do when reading
daily papers or when they are presented with posters or materials to read. You hear them
saying, Did you analyze it properly? Is that a fact or opinion? We need to study it first.

International Baccalaureate Organization 2011

Attachment...
A. Learning Engagements

Finding Out

Sorting Out
Gauging, organizing or representing new information

Experiences to assist students to gather new information about the topic

Experiences and texts that add to the knowledge base. Emphasis on gathering firsthand data in a range of ways (usually shared experiences)

Organizing, analyzing and communicating the information gathered using a range of

vehicles (e.g through Maths, Arts, English, Drama, Music or IT)

Data collection

Line of Inquiry 1:
How media(images, text and music) is used to influence behaviour of target
audiences

Museum Trip: students go to the museum and investigate the messages

behind the pieces of artwork
Students watch different videos and discuss how it influence their behavior
as audience
o Dove Evolution
o Air Pollution
o Drinking and Driving
o Words Hurt
Jigsaw Reading: students read article about the influence of media to
people. They come together as a group and share what they got with the
other members of their group
Students listen to different songs and they interpret the messages they
portrait and who, how and why the target audiences are.
Students analyze a certain fitness advertisement and find out how it
affected their behavior towards healthy living.

Line of Inquiry 2:
Critical evaluation of messages presented in the media

Evaluating messages
Students go back to the videos and analyze the message behind
them by looking at the hidden message that they want to relay, including the
discreet messages or the implied messages.
Interview relatives and members of community

Activities to assist students to process and work with the information and ideas they
have gathered about the topic (including exploring values)

Students create their own organizer showing the different messages they got
from the artwork they saw in the museum
The class comes up with a table that shows the different reactions that they
have after seeing each of the videos. Another column is added to determine
what will they do as a result of what they had seen
Students come up with a single illustration that would capture the influences
that media bring to its audience as mentioned in the article.
Students write an essay on how media is used to influence behavior of target
audiences.

Students come up with the points to consider when evaluating messages

presented in media. Students organized their responses using a graphic
organizer. They used this in helping them to evaluate the messages
presented in the media.
They create a big table that contains the different purposes of media, their
advantages, and disadvantages.

Why we need to evaluate messages in the

media
Purposes, advantages and disadvantages of different media
Students work in small groups and discuss purposes, advantages
and disadvantages of different media

Line of Inquiry 3:
How people respond to messages

Students will be presented with video and will be ask to react.

Why did you react differently?( Donut sharing)
Interview relatives and members of community
Why people respond to messages differently

The interview results were organized in such a way that the class applied what they
initially learned about the meaning of symbols. They used symbols to represent
similar answers. They came up with synthesized ideas about the reasons why people
respond to messages differently because of the following points:
a. everyone is unique
b. each one has his own beliefs, practices, experiences and
environment depends on the upbringing

Going Further
Activities to challenge and extend
Raising new questions, extending experiences, challenging assumptions. May be individually negotiated.

Students go over their questions that werent answered. They take this opportunity to conduct their own individual research.

Drawing conclusions
Raising new questions, extending experiences, challenging assumptions. May be individually negotiated. Students draw conclusions of what they have learnt. This is an
important time to evaluate the success of the unit and the needs and achievements of individuals. This is where students put it all together.
Students realized that people can always tweak or do something to the medium of presenting to send a message to the different kinds of audiences. They acknowledge
the importance of evaluating everything that they hear, see and read because they understood that there are always hidden or discreet messages.

Reflecting and Taking Action

To reflect on what has been learnt and process of learning. It is important that students be given opportunities to act upon what they have learnt. Actions are things that students can themselves and from which
they can see results.

From the understanding that they had during this unit, they are able to apply it each time that they watch video or read text from the papers that are given to them. This is
evident when we had an activity in our unit in English(Newspaper Style Report), they said they need to check twice the ads that they see and reports that they read.