Innovation: A year (so far) with Imaginative Inquiry Part 6, Connections

The last year I have been exploring the use of Imaginative Inquiry with my third grade students. The theme of the year has focused on innovation and connected with the central topic study in their classrooms around the history of the City of Chicago starting with the Ojibwe People up to the diverse neighborhoods of the current city. I have documented in the last four post the theory of Imaginative Inquiry, the introduction of the mission by the mysterious Agent X and the first missions and challenges and the connection with collaboration skills and coding robots.

As I shared in the last blog post the central topic and classroom work focused on pioneer life during the winter months and did not fit with the Agent X challenge. Additionally, in the past I have collaborated with the classroom and the science teachers on a animal research project. This project connected with research skills, the science curriculum and the classroom writers curriculum and we wanted to continue it again this year. I wanted to make sure that the excitement and focus of the Agent X challenge continued as students worked on other aspects of the curriculum. I decided to make a connection with innovation in their animal research and add an Agent X teaser to keep up the mystery.

The animal project looks at how animals survive in their different habitats. How do they find shelter, live together or alone, hunt or gather food, etc. Each student was assigned a different animal and used books, databases and websites to research their animals. We also introduce twitter as a research tool for students to ask questions of experts around the world. Students brainstorm questions they have about their animals that they are not able to find using materials available to them. We tweet the questions out to zoos using a 3rd grade account that the teachers have access to and then share the answers that we receive. The classroom teachers have the students write informational books based on their animal research and the science teacher connects their research to habitats and the work of zoos and creating habitats for animals.

At the end of the research process I made the Agent X connection. In our library we have a large screen that is controlled by a central system. I had a coworker hookup their computer and hide it over by the controls for the system. As the students entered we had them sit at the tables at the front of the space telling them they were going to continue their animal project. When the students were settled at the tables the, my coworker stealthy pressed the start button and the large projection screen mysterious started to drop down from the ceiling and the video started…

This was a good way to keep students thinking about innovation and looking to the animal world to see the innovative ways that animals make use of and adapt to their environments. Students thought about the details and filled out a Google Classroom information sheet with their connections.

The video was a big hit and the students were excited about trying to figure out what the last image had to do with their next challenge!

Up next the Chicago elevated train system, innovation and public transportation!

Innovation: A year (so far) with Imaginative Inquiry Part 5: Robots

This school year I have been exploring the use of Imaginative Inquiry with my third grade students. The theme of the year has focused on innovation and connected with the central topic study in their classrooms around the history of the City of Chicago starting with the Ojibwe People up to the diverse neighborhoods of the current city. I have documented in the last four post the theory of Imaginative Inquiry, the introduction of the mission by the mysterious Agent X and the first missions and challenges.

At this point in the school year the discussion that was happening in the classroom around pioneer life did not fit with the theme of innovation and transportation. I did not want to lose the momentum and engagement of the students so I decided to design an Agent X challenge that focused on collaboration and communication skills. The initial application from Agent X stated that those applying for the mission needed to be good communicators and have strong collaboration skills so this was a good connection and would have robots!

The next message students received from Agent X contained details about the challenge. Students were reminded that collaboration and communication skills were going to be essential to the success of their mission and the this challenge was going to focus on making sure that students were developing these skills. The details of the challenge were included. Students were going to work in small groups and needed to create a masking tape maze for a Dot & Dash robot that was at least eight feet long and had a minimum of six turns. Next the students needed to code the robot to move through the maze.

To complete this challenge students would need to design and plan with their groups. They would need to pay attention to measurement and think about the width and distance the robot could move. Students were also given a time frame to complete this mission and needed to plan their maze making sure they could accomplish it during the two weeks timeline.

Next students starting mapping out their plans, measuring and then taping their mazes on the floor. It was interesting to see how the groups worked together. Some groups divided up responsibilities and all worked from different ends of the maze. Some groups assigned jobs, one was in charge of measurements, one taping, one coding and one map reading. Some coded the maze as they went and some groups taped the whole maze and then programed the robots. It was great were empowered to determine how the they worked with each other and negotiated how their group was going to work together and accomplish the task.

This Agent X mission was a success! The students loved the challenge and stayed engaged in the whole Agent X challenge. They worked on their collaboration and communication skills and continued to develop their coding and robotics experiences.

Up next a connection to the animal world!