Activating our Space Schema

Before we get started on our first big inquiry on space, I like to discuss activating our schema.  When we activate our schema, we access any and all "space files" in our brains.  We read a few books like Sun & Moon by Marcus Pfister.  I like this book because it has a lot of little facts built into the fictional story, and it gets kids thinking and sparks ideas of what they think they already know (schema).

We brainstorm a few ideas together, and watch the following video.


This video never fails to intrigue them and activate more schema.

 Then, we go off and illustrate some of our schema.

Once we have worked on our schema, we walk around and see what schema others have.

Next, we need to talk about what resources will help us in our mission to learn about space.
This is the list that they came up with (you can tell they have had many experiences with smaller inquiries!):

We discussed areas of our classroom library that we would likely find books about space. Then, we worked as a team to gather book resources in our own classroom.  Collaboration!

We're ready to start our research!