The 8-year-old students at Kyiv International School explored global connections and cultural identity to understand how they are linked to the wider world. The students’ final hands-on projects showcase the diverse cultures of people from around the globe. They learned that one meaningful way to recognize and express culture is through many different symbols, and among them are toys - especially dolls – that play a vital role in reflecting traditions, values, and identities across different societies. It was an interesting project that required research to understand the values of our world. Our students had a lot of fun and radiated enthusiasm throughout the doll-making process.

This has been such a fun project that I have been adding to all year. Students started with stamping where they were from, and as we learn about different places, cultures, etc they get to add how they are connected to that part of the world. We also added on and linked it to our Literacy curriculum that makes world connections.

Teacher Unit Anchor charts

Written products about revolutionaries and why they were revolutionary.

Students created a class quilt to display for families to view when visiting our classroom! The school loved how we came together as a class family.

My 2nd graders have been LOVING this social studies unit and are totally engaged! I guess I just want to say a big thank you for everyone who came together to create this inquiry and how user friendly it is coming from a busy teacher! Good luck to everyone else out there! Thank you again!

Students interviewed family members to learn where they immigrated from. Then they researched that country and its culture.

1. We took the mini-poster display idea from the lesson, and I added the visuals to support what the students learned to create really eye catching posters. 2. Students color coded their notes to allow them to know which resource to back to for reference.

Students conducted research on the Native peoples of different regions of North America. Students also created the map!

After completing our investigation in the unit, students were presented with these different options to showcase their work.

in progress American Revolution inquiry wall

This is an end of unit project for the Colonial America unit. Students chose an important event or aspect of colonial America and illustrated (in medium of their choice) and wrote a caption with the perspective of all groups that we learned about on the chosen event or aspect.