A thorough update on our Inquiry to-date and current direction (and a couple of photos)

Hi everyone,

We would like to share with you the current direction of our Inquiry into change but first run through how we arrived at this point.

What did we learn in Term One?
To bring you up to speed, we started by asking the children what change meant to them. Some responses included that we can change our mistakes and we can change what we learn about. This prompted us to explore how we can change our responses to situations and make positive choices. We investigated how we can make changes that have a positive impact, that improve our life and the lives of others and that people's level of happiness can be changed through our actions.

We decided to look into what happiness means a little further. We had many parent speakers talk to us about what makes them happy and if this has changed since they were a child. We have learnt that many things make both children and adults happy. We have learnt that happiness is different things to different people, and that we can't be happy all the time.

Some children joined a project group learning how to express what they knew about happiness through drama, another group explored their ideas through music and another group helped to design the shop.

The Happy Shop
We decided to create a happy shop to develop our counting skills and to create products that we believed would bring happiness to the children in our own year one neighbourhood. We made friendship bracelets, scrolls and bookmarks with positive messages, ninjagos which have special feeling powers, and other merchandise.

We have grown our understanding of what brings people happiness from thinking it is all about fun and toys and buying things to now realising that for many of us it is family, friends and being kind to others. Most of our parent speakers said spending time with and caring for their family is the most important thing that brings them happiness - and so this means thinking of others and doing things for others brings people happiness.

Our excursion to Melbourne University 
Alison Kealy spoke to us about measuring and mapping happiness around the world. She showed us a map that indicated that western (wealthier) countries are rated as being happier than poorer countries. She invited us to come to Melbourne University where her colleague Professor Joe contested that claim and said you can't judge happiness on whether a country is wealthy or poor. We also heard from some university international students who left their families and homes to come to Melbourne because learning and exploring new places brings them happiness. Alison told us how happy learning and working at the University makes her.

They left us with the questions, can you measure happiness? How would you map happiness?
(I'm pretty sure we could measure the level of happiness of the children by their smiles as they ate their pizza on the roof of the Engineering Department).

Where to now... Term Two
Now here we are, aware that doing kind things for others can bring ourselves and others happiness. Our current question is 'How can we give of ourselves to promote greater happiness to our school community?' The children are developing their own ideas including caring for and beautifying our environment by gardening and picking up litter; making outdoor play equipment for children to play with (Freya's idea); and being kind to people.

Gina spoke to us on Friday about her work in the community that brings people happiness. She face paints at the zoo and teaches children to paint. She also submits body art pieces in competitions that raise awareness of important issues that Gina is passionate about like protecting the Great Barrier Reef and not being afraid to show your true colours. She taught us that standing up for what you believe and spreading positive messages can bring you a lot of happiness.

Upcoming Inquiry Projects on offer for the students:

• We are thinking of starting a random acts of kindness project 
• We are collaborating with the Year 6s on Friday afternoons to creatively send a message to the school community about keeping our yard clean (perhaps through rap, comics, song, dance, drama, poetry, stories and informing about the impact litter has on animals and our water system). 
• The children are going to start designing portable outdoor play equipment after Freya had a brilliant idea that a cable drum could be turned into a seesaw that would bring kids happiness. 
• Seamus also brought in an article of a collaborative exhibition of indigenous pottery titled 'happy' so we may investigate designs, colours and patterns that represent 'happy' and produce our own pottery for a school exhibition ("Every Child has the right to beauty" -Reggio Amelia Rights of the Child). 
• The children are also creating "yellow pages advertisements" to advertise a personal strength of theirs that they would like to share with others as we have discovered that learning new things brings us happiness. 
• Some children have designed their own kimochi feeling like Anton's which brings back fantastic memories. The children will be making their kimochi using fabric and designing the facial expression that will match it's feelings.
• We are commencing Year One Has Talent which started last Friday with a spectacular puppet show by Elly and Belle of "The Gruffalo". I will film this and post it for you next week. Children sharing their talents brings the entire neighbourhood so much happiness and the creativity in our neighbourhood is bursting ready to flow onto the stage!

Summary of Literacy and Numeracy concepts being developed through the Inquiry:

• Ordering Australian coins based on their value
• Counting collections of coins and finding equivalent combinations of coins to total small amounts (integrating place value understanding and addition and subtraction strategies)
• Creating TV and radio advertisements for products in our shop (ICT, speaking skills)
• Learning about how to graph sales in our shop in order to see which items are selling well and which items we may need to advertise or put on sale (statistics)
• Writing print advertisements
• Writing descriptions of their merchandise
• Writing letters of thanks to our inspiring speakers
• Working through the design process (design, creativity and technology)

We INVITE PARENTS to come and speak with us about any of your own ideas for projects AND talk to us about anything you do in the community to make a different to people's happiness.

We would love to hear from you!

Here are a few pics of our excursion and Gina's talk.