Grade 1 has officially begun tuning in to our new Unit of Inquiry under the transdisciplinary theme Sharing the Planet. Our central idea for this unit is: “Relationships between and among living things influence survival.”
To begin, we explored the concept of survival by checking students’ prior understanding in a creative and engaging way. Each student was given a sheet with a picture of a bag and asked to imagine a challenging scenario: the Earth is in danger, and people must go into hiding. In this situation, they could only bring five items that would help them survive. Students drew and labeled the five things they would place in their “survival bag.”
After completing their work, students participated in a pair-share, where they explained their choices to a partner. We then gathered as a class to compile a list of all the items students had chosen. From this list, we worked together to identify the five most essential items through a class vote. The final “Class Choice” items were: food, water, clothes, flashlight, and helmet.
Using these ideas as a starting point, students were divided into small groups and asked to share their understanding of the word survival. Some thoughtful responses emerged, including: “Survival means to live,” “Survival means to be protected,” and “Survival means to be safe.”
In the coming weeks, we will continue to explore how living things depend on one another and investigate the different ways animals survive in their environments. We are excited to see how students deepen their understanding of the connections that support life on our planet.
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