Learning Focus (Inquiry)

There is a lot of wonderful learning happening in the 5/6 Neighbourhood and a lot for us to look forward to! So much so, that this week’s learning focus comes in two parts: Inquiry, and Maths & English.

Inquiry

Our plan to create movies that will showcase our collective understanding of our Inquiry is developing into a deeply engaging, large-scale project. Over the last few weeks, students were given the opportunity to make a movie of their own choice so that we could identify their current level of filmmaking ability. Not surprisingly, they produced some truly remarkable and highly creative short films, including title such as “The hand helper”, “Seven ways to survive the zombie apocalypse” and “Beef of the thieves”. We held screenings where the filmmakers formed panels to answer questions about their films.

From such an excellent foundation, our focus now is to get organised into teams to make longer films for a red carpet premiere early in term 4, to which you will all be invited. Last week we spent some time thinking about our current collective understanding of our Inquiry statement: “Power manifests in a range of ways that can have positive and negative impacts.” Then we considered which themes our films will focus on to best illustrate our collective understanding. Each workshop group contributed a wide range of ideas, which we have distilled down into four main themes: Identity, Relationships, Transformation and Belonging. The exploration of these themes, leading to a deeper understanding of  the way power manifests, aligns itself beautifully with our PHPS vision to “nurture our students’ capacity to exercise judgement and responsibility in matters of morality, ethics and social justice.”

Thus the work begins as we form our production teams and embark on the journey that will take us to four finished films and a “making of” documentary. This will be one major focus of our Inquiry learning for the rest of the term. Concurrently, students will engage in provocations and projects, some of which will be closely connected to our filmmaking and some of which will allow them to follow their passions in other areas of learning.

Here are the provocations on offer in week 4:

Mood wall –

Creative Room

The students have developed their main themes for the movie. This week they will share what these themes evoke through a mood wall. The mood wall evolve as students start to consider ideas for their films and add them to the wall. These may be objects they find, colours, texts, sentences or quotes and images.

Take a picture story book and turn it into a script – Learning Commons Tables

Script Writing Room

In this space , students will explore the 7 stories including overcoming the monster, the quest and rebirth. There will be examples of different movies which fit into each of the different stories with posters for them to add to. 

Build your own movie theatre – Learning Commons Booths

Children will explore all of the maths connected to running a cinema. There will be opportunities to design the schedule, draw out the cinema, look at ratios of screens, explore volume through popcorn, financial maths through the shop and G.S.T.

Location – Learning Commons Tables – along windows

Pre Production Room

Students are given a scenario for a film and can use Google maps to find and locate the different places they could use to shoot the film.

Sound effects – Performance space

The foley room

Students will explore some of the different sound effects for a film. On the table there is a variety of instruments and materials that can be used for creating different sounds. Students use these to consider how we make different sounds. There will also be Makey Makey sets available as way of creating music and sound effects through an interface between technology and everyday objects, including fruit!

Costumes – Art Space

The Costume Department

Students look at different costume designs for different movies. How do they come up with a variety of costumes that relate to the plots, movie characters personalities etc.

Storyboarding – Art Space

Storyboard room

Students are given a variety of examples of storyboards used for movies they have seen or are familiar with. They also have a number of storyboard graphic organisers they can use.

Discussing story ideas – Discussion Room

Writers’ Room

The space is set up like a writers room. In this space children throw around their ideas and start to write them down. They can also add to the character attributes list on the wall.

Games and App Challenge – Construction Space

Students have an opportunity to form teams and enter the Games and App Challenge. There will be design brief templates on the table which they can use to come up with ideas. They can also look at the different tools they might take. http://gac.global2.vic.edu.au/create/

It’s going to be a great week!