Assessment
To assess the children's understanding of the lines of inquiry I put together a slide show of images from our explorations: feathered head dress, steel drum, paper lantern, stuffed animals, and a shamrock. I asked the children what they thought about these pictures and recorded their responses. Right away they identified the decorations with each child and country. Indeed the children understand that different cultures have various decorations and that they are connected to people's stories!
I made the statement "Only Trinidad has head dresses" The children disagreed and Chloe said that China has some and the question was formed "Are there head dresses in China?" We researched the question and Google Images gave us many examples of traditional Chinese head dresses. "Can we make one?" wondered Natalia. "Can we?" I asked. Everyone responded "Yes!" and so we set to work.
The children are beginning to understand that there are similarities in ideas of decorations across cultures.
Tell me Wendy how we know they are connected to stories/lives lived. This is an important inquiry and I can see the children are connected and committed to it. Were the children thinking about the traditional ceremonies or other cultural events that these items represent? I'm picking up that the children are also building observations skills in these activities as they notice differences and similarities. This is so exciting.
ReplyDeleteWhen the children saw each image of a decoration right away they called the child's name that the decoration was associated with and could recall some of the stories that came with the decorations. They could also name the culture that was identified with the child and the decoration. Rocco recalled seeing a head dress at a festival in Trinidad and when researching if there are head dresses in China we used the word "traditional" in our search in hopes of finding a head dress worn in a comparable situation.
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