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For the informed action project, students decided that they wanted to organize a fundraiser to purchase a sandbox for an orphanage. The bulletin board display shows our inquiry questions, the inquiry challenge statement and the chart students created to keep the action project organized and on track.

We traced and cut out life sized bodies and filled them with drawings of our favorite people, places, and things that make us unique.

Students wrote paragraphs and built dioramas to share information with younger students about the history of the Dakota and Anishinaabe people in Minnesota.

Fourth graders created a snack business based on what they learned about economic choices. Students managed the business and donated profits to the St. Hubert's Animal Welfare Center. The brochures they independently created were distributed across the school to promote the business.

You can see all the nations we have represented in our class and each child has written “Hi. I’m ______. Let’s work together to make our school great!” in their home languages. We hope this mural makes our school community feel proud of their differences and helps them to understand that it is our diversity that makes this school such a strong community.

Half of my class chose to create “calm down bracelets.” They interviewed our school counselor about good strategies and made templates for their bracelets. They shared about their bracelets on announcements and made a green screen video. They packaged and delivered bracelets to each class in our building and gave our school counselor a supply as well. Classrooms added them to their calm down centers in their classrooms.

Students first created different places in our community, then after we learned about how people use their time, talent, and treasure, students added different community helpers to the board.

I teach two classes, and we both created our challenge statement which was "We will create a game to teach our buddy class about meeting needs and wants." I created a game idea sheet where a couple of students suggested candy land. I chose one idea that is pictured above which took the idea of candy land but changed it to include places in our community. I split the classes into teams and each team was in charge of a different community producer. They had to come up with a producer symbol for their game board, a description of their place, and a picture for the game board. We will be delivering these to our Kindergarten buddy classes this week!

While completing the Navigating School Unit, we used shape blocks to create a map of our school. After creating this hands-on visual, we created picture versions with a few more details than the blocks allowed. Each group of students was in charge of creating a map of each of the main rooms of the school we use (classroom, office, lunchroom, library, gym, music, playground), then we all drew ourselves on one piece of paper labeled "US". We posted these up connecting each picture as well as to a (real) picture of our school building. The students enjoyed creating both versions of our school map and took great pride in having the web on display all unit.

Our final product was a giant school map put on display to help others navigate our school. We included important areas, people, rules / expectations, and things you might find there. Also included on display is a transcript/photo of our interview with a school helper, plans from our initial mapping of the school, photos of our 3D classrooms, and lots of student writing.

These are the final mini posters students created in Module 3 after drafting and going through the warm/cool/suggestions feedback cycle.