This week we journeyed to Somerset MRT and back in two different ways as part of our inquiry into the reasons people move in different ways. Before we left school, we read the story Jonathan Cleaned Up - Then He Heard a Sound by Robert Munsch, which is an imaginative story about subway trains. This led us to sharing and discussing our real-life experience with MRT travel. We completed the first a Harvard Project Zero Thinking Routine called 'I Used to Think, but Now I Think' about what we see at and on the MRT and why people move in this way. When we got back from our trip we completed the 'Now I Think' section, using our recent experiences at the MRT stations and on the trains.  

On our trip, we had so much fun exploring the busy streets of Singapore again and practicing moving safely by paying attention to road signs, walking on the sidewalks and crossing streets obeying the green and red men and staying in the crosswalk.

A highlight of our trip was when we stopped at the skate park and watched some skateboarders move with their skateboards. Emma even asked them a question: "Why do you move like this and do all these tricks?" They gave us a great answer...

"It's fun!" 

When we got back to school we connected this answer to our line of inquiry 'Reasons that we move' and added it to our 'hows, whats, and whys' of movement chart. 

With the help of some mummies and daddies we bought tickets to go on the MRT. We put them on a special spot which made them beep and opened the gate for us to go through. Then we traveled even deeper down under ground to get to the trains and used the map to know which train to get on. We knew we wanted to get back to Orchard so we looked for the 'O' on the red line. Soon the train came and we hopped on! We were lucky to all get seats, but noticed that there were no seat belts to keep us from tipping when the train turned. When we got off the train we talked about which way was better to get to Somerset: walking or MRT. We continued the discussion when we got back to our classroom.  

What is better about walking?

• you can have a snack (Denzil)
• you can skateboard (Aziz & Johnny) 
• you can take photos (Ayesha) 
• you can jump (Johnny) 
• we could see people skateboarding (Aziz) and doing tricks (Denzil) and jumping on some rails (Lea) 
• you can see birds (Denzil) 
• you can see trees (Daniel) 
• We can see different places like houses and restaurants. (Lea) 
• We can see this [the traffic lights] and they go in a pattern. (Wilma) 
• We can hear the cars vrooming. (Lucy)

What is better about the MRT? 

• It's much quicker (Daniel) 
• You can sit down and play your mum's mini iPad (Cameron) 
• You can sit down so you don't fall (Zoe) 
• It's safer than walking because only grown ups can stand up (Aziz) 
• It goes so fast. (Aziz) 
• Whenever the train stops the doors open and other people get in and out. (Lea) 

Which is the better way to get to Somerset? 

• MRT! (Everyone) 
• It's more faster! (Cameron) 
• The MRT because when we walked our legs got tired and we can see black out the window on the MRT. (Lucy 
• Outside was so hot and inside the MRT was not hot. (Wilma) ...because there was aircon. (Daniel) 
• You use so much energy walking. (Wilma)
• Walking is tiring. (Aziz) 

Our discussions were also supported by drawings we made on two opposite pages of our movement books. One drawing was us walking to Somerset and the other was us taking the MRT back. 

Two days later during their free play, Henry, Frankie, Daniel, Cameron, and Axel decided to build an MRT. "Somerset MRT!", said Henry! 

We then walked beside the street on the sidewalk for people who are walking. We had to cross Orchard Boulevard and practiced stopping at the side of the road for the 'red man' and crossing -- looking both ways first -- when the man turned green.

We continued to observe and analyze movement on the road and also began to consider how the road is organized when Denzil noticed signs in the shape of diamonds and triangles and Johnny noticed some patterns. 

Here are the signs we saw. Which shapes do you see?  

Here are the patterns Johnny and others noticed. Can you see what they are? 

Here are some of our reflections: 

• I see the red and yellow and that means stop and slow down. There are lights for people to see. (Ayesha)
• I saw a truck. It's red and he's stopping and amber and he's getting ready and green and he's going. (Lucy)
• I saw a car that was moving with lights. The red man and the green man let people go. The red one means people stop. (Lea) 
• There was a taxi. It was driving people. (Zoe) 
• There is a bus taking people to school. (Zoe) 
• There's cars and this one [the light] is yellow and red and green. Go and stop and slow. (Cameron) 
• A bus and the people are going on the bus. (Axel) 
• I saw people waiting for the cars and buses to stop. I also saw some people and buildings and clouds in the sky. (Denzil) 
• The car and the taxi and the trucks and the motorcycle and the peoples. They are all going to their place. (Daniel) 
• I saw a pattern: black, yellow, black, yellow. I saw cars and trees. There were big giant buses driving. (Johnny) 
• I saw cars and buses driving and then when the light is changed to red the people stop and at green the people just go. (Emma) 
• I saw a bus and a car and they were zooming. (Aziz) 
• A bus is running. (Wilma) 
• A bus and my friends. There was someone going inside the bus. There's a bicycle and a walk. (Wilma) 
• I saw motorcycles and trucks and I also saw some airplanes when I looked up. (Violett)  

When we got back to school we spent the rest of the morning representing and interpreting what we saw in our classroom using open-ended materials and other items from our classroom. Here is our work so far: 

If you follow our blog, you'll remember that a tension emerged for us recently. When we practiced yoga as part of our current inquiry into movement, there were some differences in opinions over whether yoga was exercise or not.

This led us to ask the question "What is exercise?" and since then we've been investigating.   

After swimming, we reflected on the experience: 

The next step was to play soccer: 

Our very last step was to turn back to the original controversy: Is yoga exercise or not? Now we had developed a criteria of what exercise is to decide: 

• It makes you stronger. (Zoe) 
• Your whole body is moving. (Aziz & Denzil) 

So...is yoga exercise??? ....YES!!

As we reflected on our chart and the decisions we had made about what was exercise and what was not we also started to think about why exercise is important:

• You need it so you can walk to long places and your mummy and daddy don't need to keep carrying you a lot. (Lucy)
• It makes you stronger. (Johnny)
• Like stronger so you can help mummy and daddy carry very heavy things up. (Zoe)
• If you do more exercise you can be more speedy and faster and then if you do it more and more times you'll have more energy next time. (Cameron)
• You need to do it so you can do new things like bounce a ball on your knee. (Denzil)
• Or on your head. (Johnny) 

These great ideas connect to one of our lines of inquiry: "The importance of movement in our lives". We'll continue to explore these concepts as our unit continues. 

This week we went on a swimming field trip to explore movement in the water as part of our current unit of inquiry.

At the pool we had so much fun moving through the water in different ways and investigating the hows and whys of moving in water. Check out these photos and the video of our activities. You can even see us underwater! 

After our swimming experience, we reflected as a group back at school:

• I was swimming in the water. (Olivia) 
• I was floating. (Denzil) 
• If you're little and you don't have your arm bands for swimming all you have to do is keep kicking. (Lucy) 
• We can blow bubbles in the water. (Wilma) 
• I was balancing and swimming like my brother. (Ayesha) 
• We played with things that sink all the way to the bottom and then we went to get them. (Lea) 
• We splashed. (Wilma) 
• It was fun when I floated. (Zoe) 
• I felt brave when I was floating. I usually wear my arm bands but I didn't today and I didn't drown. (Lucy) 
• When somebody kicks their legs in the water they're being brave. (Ayesha) 

We also used this experience to support and develop our ongoing investigation into 'What is exercise?'. Stay tuned for another post soon about this! 

After the discussion we got answers to some of our wonderings with a video that shows Heather Hansen creating her art. We learned that these pieces are drawings made with charcoal and Heather's whole body moving with the charcoal. We thought this was amazing and saw the connections to our inquiry into movement straight away! 

When Ms. Alison suggested that we try doing something like this ourselves, we could barely contain ourselves. So, we got to it! We used crayons instead of charcoal and paper that was a bit smaller than Heather's but still got a very good idea of the wonderful things our bodies can create when we put them in motion! We hope you enjoy our work!  

Last week we tried some yoga as part of our inquiry into movement. We regularly practice some stretching and yoga sequences in our classroom, but some of the movements introduced were new to us. It was also exciting to use real yoga mats in the multi-purpose room! Through the session we showed our ability to be risk-takers by challenging our bodies and ranges of motion in new ways. 

After the session, we completed painted reflections and Ms. Alison asked the students what their feelings about their yoga experience were. This is the discussion that emerged: 

The idea of yoga as exercise and what qualifies as exercise has continued to be a point of curiosity and dialogue in our class. There are a whole range of (very strong!) opinions which have continued to be discussed. These diverse opinions, wonderings, and conversations are part of the 'Tension' stage in our inquiry. 'Tensions' are puzzles, issues, or problems that may become the basis of deeper investigations (Kathy Short, "Inquiry as a Stance on Curriculum", Taking the PYP Forward, 2009). The next step will be for Ms. Alison to propose the concept of exercise as an 'Investigation'. We'll see how it goes!  

Yesterday we demonstrated our ability to be risk-takers and challenged our bodies and movement skills at the Bishan-Ang Mo Kio Adventure Playground. We LOVED this field trip! This park has such incredible structures to practice climbing, sliding, jumping, crawling, and more! We wished that we could have stayed for longer and hope that our families will take us back here soon! 

As a response to our experiences, we are working on creating a class book which will be stored in our classroom library. We also drew pictures and had a go at writing words to represent our activities in our Movement Journals. 

Our new unit of inquiry is part of the PYP transdisciplinary theme 'How We Organize Ourselves'. We will be exploring movement through the central idea: 'We move in different ways and for different purposes'. We started this week with a 2-day unit invitation in our Multipurpose Room. We had so much fun responding to the different materials and exploring the different ways we can move our bodies! Check it out! 

During our play, we periodically stopped to meet as a group and discuss the different ways we were moving our bodies and which materials we were using. We also thought about why we move. These conversations expanded our vocabularies and helped us to use more specific words to describe our movements. Here are our ideas so far:  

As you can see, we were also able to make the connection that we don't move around using only our bodies (Lucy), but also rely on different "vehicles" (Aziz) for transport. We will be adding to our chart as we progress through our unit.