'Our People, Our Place, Our Story' Integrated Unit

Throughout our integrated unit, the children were engaged in learning experiences in relation to:

• What is my story?
• What is our story? (Class Focus)
• What is our story? (School Focus)
• What is our story? (Community Focus)
• What is our story? (Science Focus)

Classes explored these questions in many different ways.  For example: 

• What is my story? - In one class the children brought in a collection of 'Fragments of Evidence'.  As the items in the bag were being shared, the children shared their story. In another class, the children created an artwork using koru to represent their family story. In several classes, the children learnt their mihi. Some classes presented these digitally.
  
• What is our story?  The class focus was developed through the Block Classroom. As well as 'building' their learning environment, classes developed their learning culture. They developed a class treaty and set up their class blogs. As part of the school focus, each class explored our school vision statement and the six attributes of the College Street Kid.  As part of the community focus, one class completed an inquiry into the community organisation 'Just Zilch'.  For our science focus, classes explored and shared the stories of different landforms.  Some classes started by reading Maori myths and then explored the science behind the creation of the landform.

A school-wide focus for our integrated units is to explicitly teach children how to be successful researchers. Classes co-constructed their understanding of this process when they completed a whole class inquiry. For Phase Two of the 'Inquire' stage of our unit, the children asked their own research questions and followed through the research cycle. Some children worked individually, most children worked in small groups.