Space Inquiry: Immersion Stage

Before starting any investigating in this big curricular inquiry, I explain the different inquiry stages that we will be going through.

In a nutshell:

Our brains are like sponges in the Immersion Stage.  We are soaking up any learning we can find. 
At the end of this stage, we think about lingering questions that we would like to answer.

We research to find answers to our questions in the Investigation Stage. 
Often we are grouped by interest in Research Groups at this stage.

In the Coalesce Stage we start organizing our thinking and research.

When we are in the Go Public Stage, we are sharing our learning with others and teaching our new schema.

We start the Immersion Stage with solely books.  As an introduction to our nonfiction text features unit in Reading Workshop, we talk about how when we are looking at books where the words are too challenging, the headings give us a clue to what each section is about.  As first grade readers, many of us need to infer using pictures and reading headings and captions for further clues.

This is definitely an exciting stage--many of the pictures didn't even turn out because the kids were moving so fast to share their learning with others!

The kids were in awe after this Introduction to Our Solar System video.