Innovation: A year (so far) with Imaginative Inquiry: The Test!

Over this school year (so far), I have been engaging in an imaginative inquiry project with my third grade students focusing on the theme of innovation. Here is a link to my first blog post about the practice of Imaginative Inquiry and the plan.

The third graders had submitted their applications and they were anxiously waiting to hear if they had been accepted to the mission. They were so excited when a box with a X on it arrived just a couple days later. Students learned they had passed the application process but now they had to pass a test to see if they were really ready to be apart of Agent X’s team.  In the package was a collection of materials including pieces of birch bark, drawings of Ojibwe People by lakes and with canoes, letters dated from the 1840s documenting the first observations of Western Europeans detailing their amazement at the birch bark canoe. The students were instructed to examine the materials and think about how they were connected, what details they noticed about the materials and what questions they had about the materials.

Students documented all their research and discussed what connections they made to information they were learning in the classroom as part of their study of the Ojibwe People. This step was a good way to introduce students to primary source documents and other resources to really have them think deeper and more critically about the materials and the information they were learning. The students were so engaged in this process and excited about they challenge that they really dived into the process and solving the mystery.

What I really like about this project and using Imaginative Inquiry with the students is they feel empowered in the process. By removing the teacher as the source of instructions and the leader of the process the students step up and take ownership of their learning. They have to think about and pull information from the messages from X and determine what they need to do. As the teacher I was able to provide the students with the information they needed to engage in the process and to meet the learning goals we had for this project and then step away and the students were the ones who determined the path and felt empowered to lead the way!  

Up next..the Mission and more clues!