12-13+JIES+Tokyo

Teacher: Bart Miller twitter:@barmill blog: ideasymphony.blogspot.jp

Central Idea: Children worldwide encounter a range of challenges, risks, and opportunities.

Public Google Drive folder: Friends in Distant Lands (public)

2013 June 17 Commented about Phaung Daw Oo School, Ms Suzuki's presentation, and an interesting article on our class blog.

2013 June 14 Guest speaker, Asumi Suzuki, visited the class to talk about her work in a Phaung Daw Oo School in Myanmar.

Introduction to the school

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2013 June 12 Set up class Wiki to raise awareness about global issues. Tweeted links with relevant hashtags & mentions of related organizations.

2013 June 7 Finished watching //Rabbit Proof Fence//. Will write reflections on class blog.

2013 May 31 We answered questions about children's circumstances and opportunities from CIS using collaborative google docs.

2013 May 20 Video reply to India: media type="youtube" key="lwcLjpNUGf8?feature=player_detailpage" height="360" width="640"

2013 May 10 Finished a Mystery Class Inquiry!

2013 May 7 TED 'Children' Assignment - After a week of holidays, we're back playing catch up. This week, students will complete this assignment. The idea is for them to become familiar with the ubiquitous TED format and watch inspirational videos with regards to children, choose one and comment on it by making a blog post.

Next, they will edit and promote their posts via twitter and by posting links on other students' blogs.

2013 April 25 Responses to the survey stream in slowly. I don't think the results will surprise me. I'm really looking forward to my students' reactions not only to people's answers, but to the fact that many people have participated!

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2013 April 23 To kick it off, we watched a 60 Minutes video about the Lost Boys of Sudan and used a session to explore the UNICEF website. As a formative assessment and a way to reach outside our classroom, we created a form to survey people's awareness of children's rights issues.

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2013 April 17 Our school has been embroiled in preparations for our International Children's Day event. It's a great opportunity for the students to work together in mixed age groups, inquire into different cultures, and participate in organizing an event that promises to host several hundred guests.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">However, it's rather off-track as far as this project is concerned!

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2013 April 10 <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">As part of our initial discussion, we made this list of what is important for children: <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">water <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">food <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">doctor <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">money <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">school <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">refrigerator <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">house <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">family <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">toys <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">friends <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">clothes <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">Earth <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">love

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">2013 April 8 <span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">This has been a difficult unit for me to plan, partly due to time constraints, but mostly due to wanting to structure it as little as possible. Most of the writing is being done as the inquiry progresses, which I'm finding to be both exciting and frightening. Here's a link to the planning document. It's a continuing work in progress, but I'm hoping that this wiki will serve as a better planning and documentation resource for the next few weeks.

<span style="font-family: Verdana,Geneva,sans-serif;">We invited other classes to collaborate via twitter and the PYP Threads website.