How Are You Intelligent?

Our Brainwave unit has led us into the multiple intelligences.  We've learned that there are many different ways we learn, and each of us is more in tune to learning in a specific manner.  Some of our intelligences are number smart, music smart, nature smaart, self smart, etc.  In groups we read an article about some of these intelligences before then taking a survey to see if we can find out how we learn best.  Learning how we learn will help us to study, and incorporate new information into our minds.

Expert Groupings

In IPC we're currently learning about the different learning styles.  For our first task related to this, in their pods students were given one paragraph to read.  They initially had to read their paragraph independently and then discuss what it was about.  Working together, they needed to come up with a one sentence summary about their paragraph.  Finally, their group shared with the rest of the class what their information said.  This was a great way for students to share their knowledge, summarize and practice their group work skills.

IPC Brain Games

In IPC students had chosen an activity and practiced it for a week with a clear purpose.  As we've been talking in our Brainwave unit, when you learn something new you create new neuro pathways in the brain.  We worked on creating one or more of these neuro pathways by learning something new - whether it was a song, poem, activity, instrument, etc.

This week students have been sharing their project, their success, their hurdles and given demonstrations regarding their brain game.  It's been great to see students share their experiences and discuss the results and expanding ideas.

Neurons

As we look closely at neurons in our IPC Brainwave unit, we see that a neuron is composed of various parts.  There is the axon, cell body and dendrites.  Today we learned that when one neuron's axon touches another neuron's dendrites a synapses occurs.  To illustrate this further, we acted this process out.  In partners, one student used their arm to represent an axon while their partner used their fingers to represent dendrites.  When the dendrites grasped onto the axon (or in our case when the hands grasped onto the arm) we created a synapses.  It's with hope that this kinaesthetic learning helps aid in the understanding of the process for the students.

AXON

DENDRITES

SYNAPSES!

Parts of the Brain

In our IPC unit Brainwave we are starting to look at the specific parts of the brain and the roles they play in regards to our bodies.  We also look to incorporate technology in many ways in the classroom thus was the case during today's lessons.

First students listened to an article read to them online (kidshealth.org/kid/htbw/brain.html).  They had the same article in front of them in paper form as well.

Second, in partners they gleaned information read by noting the parts of the brain and a role that specific part played.  We then discussed our answers in a whole class setting as we found out that each part of the brain had multiple roles in our body functioning.

Entry Point

Yesterday students in both grade 4 classes participated in an activity as their entry point for IPC.  Our first unit in IPC is called Brainwave, and in this fun activity students collaborated in teams to get from one island to another without being eaten by sharks. Yikes!  It was great to see the students work and figure things out together.  We used many of our IPC personal goals in this activity including: collaboration, communication, adaptability and resilience.