Riverside School: Why Clean Water is Important?

During our MI day, we explored the question ,Why is Clean water important? Every teacher developed a lesson that incorporated the multi- intellegence focus of our school as well as deBono's six hats. We used our Instructional Intellegence to gather and explore the question. Students were divided into multi- graded groups of about 13 students. Every teacher started the day with the same video to get the students thinking about the importance of clean water. Teachers also used their TRIBES training to remind students of what is needed for successful group work and the reflection at the end of the day.
Lessons:
Mr. Frey used the word smarts and our red hat to explore a story about a villiage that had two endings- one happy and the results of clean water and the other that was a sad ending with dirty water. Students used concept attainment to put the feeling into groups and then brainstormed some ideas as to how to change the outcome of the story.
Ms. Klaudt used a video and turned it into a moving PWIM- gathering words and phrases. Students then wrote them into good research questions. We used these questions to guide our reflection at the end of the day.
Ms. Ewert's station used our critical thinking hat. We only had so much water and how would we divide that water- personal use, agriculture, industrial. Students had to travel through the school to gather the water and then ration it.
Ms. Nicoll used the physical MI to explore how hard it was to pump water and then carry it long distances.
Ms. Hendricks used our white hat, green hat, black hat and red hat. That means facts, creative thinking, negative thinking and emotional thinking. We divided a page into cause, effect and solution. We brainstormed what causes water to become polluted or dirty. After that we did a visual- we created our world- a baggy of dirt, some water, some animal figures, a house, a manufacturing center, agriculture and then took the causes of the dirty water and poured things into the bucket to represent all the causes. Then we came up with the effects after seeing some of the results in our test. At the end we used our green hats to come up with some solutions. It was interesting when we looked at the solutions from the first group to the last group and how focused and creative we became.