Planning the inquiry
1. What is our purpose?
Class/grade: UKG
Age group: 6 to 7 years
To inquire into the following:
School: Vidyatree Modern World College School code: 006035

transdisciplinary theme: Where we are in place and time.

An inquiry into orientation in place and time, personal histories, homes and
Title: Family histories
journeys, the discoveries, explorations and migrations of human kind, relationship
between and the interconnectedness of the individual and civilizations, from local to
Teacher(s): Rachna verma, Subhadra Singh, Vandana Srivastava
global perspective.
PYP planner
Date:
Central idea: Knowing about our family histories enables us to discover our cultural
origins and develop historical awareness.
Proposed duration: number of hours
over number of weeks:6 weeks.
Summative assessment task(s):
What are the possible ways of assessing students’ understanding of the central idea? What
evidence, including student-initiated actions, will we look for?
Task – Students will present their knowledge about their family history. They can present their
understanding in any way : collage, drawing, through heirlooms, through generation form.
2. What do we want to learn?
What are the key concepts (form, function, causation, change, connection, perspective,
responsibility, reflection) to be emphasized within this inquiry?
Tool: Checklist
1.
2.
Relevant on learning—drawing, collage, heirloom must be linked to the purpose of
the task.
Depth Knowledge.
Skills Focused: Research Skills: Learners will research about their family history.

Form

Connection

Function
What lines of inquiry will define the scope of the inquiry into the central idea?



Family Histories (Form).
How family histories are different or alike over time (Change).
Ways we can find out about our histories (Function).
Recording data and formulating Question: Learners will make their booklet and will record their
findings in it.



LOI 1-SST-Social organization and culture (artifacts,famiy,identity,religion, traditions)
LOI 2-SST-Continuity and change (history, migration)
LOI 3-PSPE- Interactions (Team work, belonging, community, culture)
Teacher will assess through their booklet and reflection of their drawing
What teacher questions/provocations will drive these inquiries?
Responsibility - They were able to understand the various responsibilities
Q-•
Collection of data: Learners will collect data on importance dates and event of their family.
Recording data and formulating Question: Learners will make their booklet and will record their
findings in it when they interview their GP, parents and relatives.
How can we know about our family past?
• How have our family traditions changed over time?
• How have our ancestors influenced our own way of living?
3. How might we know what we have learned?
This column
should be used in conjunction with “How best might we learn?”
Planning
the inquiry
What are the possible ways of assessing students’ prior knowledge and skills? What evidence
will we look for?
For prior knowledge: Role play will be presented by the teachers to present the time on
important dates and event and in their lifes.
Task 1: My Favourite Family member. (sheet)
Task 2: After listening to the visitor, students write on a graffiti board the most distant
memory they know about their families (could also be a memory shared by a parent
or grandparent, not necessarily only the student’s memory).
Task 3: The teacher builds a timeline with the students’ help and displays it across
the room to record the history of the class. They will start the timeline in the current
day and then move backwards over time.
Task 4: One minute extempore (child will pick one chit and speak about any one of
the family member).
What are the possible ways of assessing student learning in the context of the lines of inquiry?
What evidence will we look for?
F.A ( LOI-1 ) :
Task 1- Students will draw the most important things they have learned about their
families. Teachers will use this drawing to discuss this with them on a one-to-one
basis and assess their level of understanding of the central idea. (Anecdotal record)
Students will present their drawings to the class and will compare them to the
information on the graffiti board to see the differences between what they knew
about their families at the beginning of the unit and what they know by then. They
will have the opportunity to walk through the gallery of drawings, looking at all the
pictures and talking to their friends about them. They will self-assess and reflect on
how this makes them feel at the end of the unit. (Reflection )
Students will be able to recognize and show an understanding of the fact that
their family histories have developed over time and that they have explored and
identified their personal histories throughout this inquiry
4. How best might we learn?
What are the learning experiences suggested by the teacher and/or students to encourage the students to
engage with the inquiries and address the driving questions?
A visitor comes to the class with a mystery box containing artifacts from her family. Once the students have
guessed the three things in the box, the visitor explains how these things are related to her. Then, she / he starts
telling them the story of her / his family by using a backward timeline (starting at the present and working
backwards).
LOI 1: Task – Create fun and interesting timelines Timelines could include special memories, birthdays, holidays,
important life events, moves and career changes
1: Important dates in your life or your ancestor's life!
2: Discover interesting facts and events that happened during your own lifetime or in an ancestors' lifetime.
3: Interview to your GP, Parents including:
4. Pair n Share: Learners will share their time line with their friends.
LOI 2- : Tasks
1.Our culture: Encourage families to have “Family History day” at school, where the parents and the children
cook a traditional or favorite family dish
2. each student will ask from an older adult about a time in their life that they remember clearly when they were
happy, sad or excited. Each child should pair up with another and the two will act out a skit about each
relative’s story these intergenerational skits will help the students to live those small moments of history
3. Share heirlooms and photographs: show and tell with the kids. We will invite parents to tell stories of their
childhood through old photo albums, holiday pictures, or heirlooms to children.
LOI 3 –Tasks
1: Your Genealogy Gather together family information and record it on the following forms: An online fill-in 3
Generation Pedigree Chart that can be printed and framed.
2 Students listen attentively to stories (parents’ presentations, teacher reading stories) and ask appropriate
questions. (Oral communication rubric)
Map activity- Students will mark the birth place of their parents and grand parents in the map.
Scavengers hunt: Grandparent’s attic or the basement is full of old junk and lots of interesting things .Go with
your elders and find interesting things like- old cassettes, albums, cards and letters, radio/ tape etc. and make a
collage / a collection box.
The Tigger Movie FamilyTree - Choose from 3 different designs.
F.A ( LOI-2 ) : Venn Diagram: ( Students will be paired and they will share about the
A Fun Childrens' fill-in Family Group Record that can be printed for personal Book of Remembrance.
similarities and differences of their family culture.)
Assessment tool: Rubrics
Preserve Living Memory: interview living relatives or people in the ward to help document their treasured stories
F.A ( LOI-3 ) : learners will present their generation chart.
Check list: 1. Include the name of atleast 4 generation.
and memories. Encourage the youth to visit a living relative and record an interview that can later be transcribed
and entered in the tree.
Family Temple Trip: attend the temple and participate in temple ordinances for the family names that have been
discovered
What opportunities will occur for trans disciplinary skills development and for the development of the attributes of
the learner profile?
Perspective- Opportunities will be given to students to talk and explore their family through discussions,
photographs.
© International Baccalaureate Organization 2007
Open-minded- Students will have the opportunities to explore their family.
Social- Respecting Others Group work and working in pair will help them develop their social skills.
Reflecting on the inquiry
6. To what extent did we achieve our purpose?
7. To what extent did we include the elements of the PYP?
Assess the outcome of the inquiry by providing evidence of students’ understanding of the
central idea. The reflections of all teachers involved in the planning and teaching of the inquiry
should be included.
What were the learning experiences that enabled students to:
Students understood that families are all different and that their personal and family
History has been built over time. During whole class reflections we recorded
Comments like this:
Sakshii knows that her parents history ties back to some village, and her language is different
from others but she knows that English is a very useful language and needed to communicate
with certain people.
Overall the students demonstrated a good understanding of the central idea and
showed a high level of engagement investigating the different lines of inquiry.
Through pictures drawn during activity time like my most memorable moment
How you could improve on the assessment task(s) so that you would have a more accurate
picture of each student’s understanding of the central idea.
The assessment task was effective since students had the opportunity to either do a
role play or arranging the gallery walk through which they were able to represente
their family histories and explain their role. They grasped the idea of being the result
of their family history. However, this task could be improved by including some
drawing task so that according to presentation preferences and learning styles and
the students could choose the way to represent their ideas.
What was the evidence that connections were made between the central idea and the
transdisciplinary theme?
Through different activities which were planned targeting the LOIs , learners were able to know
about their family histories and they came to know about the differences between the era of
their grand/ great grand parents and today’s life style.

develop an understanding of the concepts identified in “What do we want to learn?”

demonstrate the learning and application of particular transdisciplinary skills?

develop particular attributes of the learner profile and/or attitudes?
In each case, explain your selection.
Key concepts
Change: Students identified three moments in their families histories (current,
recent past and distant past) through the photographs and heirlooms bought by
them. One day they dressed up as their grand parents also bought the favourite food
of their grandparents to know the things that have changed over time in their families
(in food, clothes, communication).
Students listened to different family histories and made comparisons of how
people lived a long time ago (e.g. during their grandparents’ time) and how they
live now.
Students interviewed with a partner and listened to each other talk about their family
histories. They noticed that everyone has somewhat of a different family history, but
yet all of them are similar and one is not better than another, just different. The
students reinforced this concept by drawing about all they have heard (including
traditions, customs, events, etc). In this way they learned to respect the difference.
Reflection: During circle time, students reflected on what they learned. Most of these
reflections were oral. In the final reflection, they mentioned that now that they know
their own families better they will love them more. They also said that they were
going to take care of their families and keep their culture as well as respecting other
cultures and traditions.
Related concepts
Tradition: Students listened to stories of different traditions people have around
the world. They drew about their own family traditions.
History: The articles students brought in to share encouraged them to think of
what the past was like for their families, as they had to research what each
artifact was, what it was for, and why was it so “valuable”.
Time: Students had to create the time line in a backward direction. This enabled
them to understand that we have to move backwards to rebuild what has
happened in the past.
The learning experiences proved to be very interesting to the learners and
Social skills: Students worked as a group and adopted different roles when creating
the scenes for their tale. They also cooperated and accepted responsibility as a
whole when putting together the artifact museum. Communication skills: They did
several presentations to the class.
Reflecting on the inquiry
8. What student-initiated inquiries arose from the learning?
9. Teacher notes
Record a range of student-initiated inquiries and student questions and
highlight any
that were incorporated into the teaching and learning.
Students presented information about they discovered to the class.
• They listened and talked to each other during pair interviews and when
interviewing their
family members.
• They wrote about their families.
• They learned new vocabulary.
• They expressed information visually through pictures and objects.
Connections to mathematics were made when exploring the concept of time
and developing
timelines and working backwards.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Why are old things important in a family?
Where does my family come from?
Did families have the same type of books, cloths long ago?
How is technology different?
How were things a long time ago?
Why did specific families come from their homeland because the child
did not have any artifacts?
Why are families different?
What did my grandfather do when he was a child?
Students showed great interest in knowing and finding out about their family
histories.
At this point teachers should go back to box 2 “What do we want to learn?”
and
highlight the teacher questions/provocations that were most effective in
driving the
inquiries.
What student-initiated actions arose from the learning? Record studentinitiated actions taken by individuals or groups showing their ability to reflect,
to choose and to act.
Students reflected on the importance of respecting their own and others’
family
histories and traditions. Students also were surprised that there are so many
differences but yet they are all friends and feel as if they are the same.
© International Baccalaureate Organization 2007
The central idea of this unit was connected to the central idea of the unit in
an earlier grade/
year level about families: Having families and friends helps people develop
social awareness.
.
Students seemed to enjoy all the conversation regarding family histories.
They also looked at pictures of
old school houses and were amazed to see.
The discussions seemed to be more valuable as the students learned to
share and listen to each other, and have a conversation
with each other.
What people, places, audio-visual materials, related literature, music, art, computer software, etc, will be available?http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x13qemm_we-are-a-happy-family-animated-english-5. 5
5) What resources need to be gathered?
nursery-rhyme_fun
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiRUF7hvWuM (family song)
Rhyme: My family(open the door),Father finger (father finger -2 where are you….),Meri mummy mujhko pyari, Aao tumhe main dikhlata hun, Chunnu Munnu the do bhai…,Dada g ka danda gol……
Story: Goldilocks., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWy4qVrhoyw
The farmer and his sons. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9agw5Q9t-Tc,
The mice who ate the iron bar. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yS6pjSPw5c(imp of family) ,
Cinderella.
Guest speaker: Grandparents of any student.
Field trip to ‘Imambara’., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiRUF7hvWuM (family song)
Q4- What was the evidence that connections were made between the central idea and the transdisciplinary theme?
Learner profile: Communication skills,
Maths: Learners will make their dream house with the help of different shapes.
Number of members in your family.(count and write)
Compare the number of members in your and your friend’s family (>,< or =) .
Bar graph of nuclear and joint families( data handling).
Ages of family members(ascending and descending order).
Ages/numbers of family members (number names).
English: Circle the vowels in the spellings of names of your family members(Vowels and consonents).
Birth days of the family members (Months of the year).
Favourite fruits and colours of family members (Fruits and colours) .
Opposites(find out who is shortest/ tallest, fat/thin, big/small etc.).
Sentence framing(Use of this/these).
Hindi: 2,3,4 akshar ke shabd.(papa, baba, mama, chacha,nana dada, kaka etc.) .
Amatrik and ‘aa ki matra ke vakya’ .
Skills: Communication skills(Discussions, data handling) .
Research skills(collecting the old things, finding about the choices etc).
Thinking skills(Knowing about the family through ‘family Tree’) .
Through all the activities the learner will develop into an – Inquirer, thinker, communicator, knowledgeable, open minded and a reflective person.
© International Baccalaureate Organization 2007