If you aren't familiar with inquiry circles I've wrote about them here and here back when I was teaching third grade. During inquiry circles students choose a question to study or research. They work collaboratively to answer the question. For our Star Wars Inquiry students selected a "burning question" they had about a Star Wars character. A question that couldn't be answered for sure, yet. As a class we brainstormed a list of questions we wondered about. Questions that we hoped would be answered in the next movie, The Last Jedi. For example, Who is Rey? Why was she left on Jakku? What would happen to her next? If you are a big Star Wars fan, you are familiar with these questions and probably have your own theories! Inquiry groups were formed based on students questions. We had a group wondering about Supreme Leader Snoke and Kylo Ren. I formed 2 groups each for Luke Skywalker and Rey because so many students were interested in these characters.
In the next part of the inquiry circles I did some lessons on collaboration, note-taking and listening. Then they set off to research everything they could find out about their character and evidence that might help them form a theory about their "burning question". Students used Wookiepedia, clips from movies and the trailers for the Last Jedi. We even had some Star Wars books they could use. After collected information was verified as 'canon', I showed students how to web out information so that they could begin looking for patterns that would help them form a theory. Once they had their theory, they needed to be able to back it up with evidence either from the movies, trailers or Wookiepedia.
Each day as students worked together, I moved between groups to help them navigate Wookiepedia, read and understand passages, suggest further reading and generally talk to them and push their thinking. Of course another big part of inquiry circles is learning to work collaboratively. Some groups had few problems and moved along, while others needed some help problem solving. All of these things are messy, but I view them as good learning experiences. Sometimes I would have a struggling group watch a more productive group to help them see how to make it work. One group struggled to come up with a theory on Rey. So they needed me to help them go over their evidence and help them think aloud. They struggled throughout with listening to one another. So, they needed frequent interventions and reminders from me. But eventually they were successful. I ended up combining the Luke groups because of absences and lack of participation by 1 student. This made the group too large and they struggled when it came time to plan the podcast. At one point a student rewrote the whole script at home. We had to have a discussion about how unfair this was because the rest of the group didn't have a say in the matter. The work was suppose to be collaborative. This particular student wasn't comfortable with the messiness of working collaboratively. He couldn't see the value of listening to others' ideas or understanding that some students needed things repeated or explained more than once. And that sometimes people don't pay attention. But with lots of teacher guidance and reminders this group turned out a great podcast that was so much better than the script wrote at home because it had input from everyone. I'm still not sure if I did the right thing by combining them.
I decided to have my students present their theories on several episodes of our podcast, Radio Rosenquist. Actually, I didn't have a class podcast...yet. I'd been thinking about starting one and this project just pushed me to jump in and start one. Sometimes that is the best way to begin. So in less than 3 weeks my students completed the inquiry circles, wrote podcast scripts, practiced and record their podcasts. I will write another post about podcasting at a later date.
Last night my husband and I went with friends to see The Last Jedi. I loved it! No surprise there. This morning we brought our 5th graders to see it. They loved it too. Our local movie theater opened the theater at 9am just for us. It was both exciting and emotional to sit in a theater with well over one hundred 5th graders and experience this movie with them. There is no way this post can show how valuable this Star Wars unit is to my 5th graders. Of course Star Wars captures their attention, but I am always amazed at the critical thinking my students engage in, and the connections they make to other literature and everyday life.
You can listen to our podcasts here or here.
