What is the Story of Me?

We have been working on an inquiry investigating the essential question, 'what is the story of me?'. The students have been investigating what makes up their story.

We started by setting up a very simple provocation to encourage the students to look at themselves more closely.

The students spent time looking at themselves in the mirror and noticing their different features. We listened as the students talked about what they saw when they looked in the mirrors.

P.D- I noticed around our eyes is different colours and a black dot in the middle and our eyebrows have lots of hair

A.A- and beside our eyes there are some dots, some red dots beside and also beside your nose, but we don’t know what they are called. All the girls have earrings. 

I.D- I have eyelashes 

I.L- you have ears, everyone!

M.W- I noticed when I was looking in the mirror I had lines beside your cheeks or your smile 

M.A- glasses

A.R- I noticed I have a mouth

A.C- some of the grown ups have bald, some of them have, some no hair

D.S- when I was looking at myself I have like these coloured eyes and that was like a big black dot in them 

The students then began to sketch themselves, their first attempt at a self-portrait. 

The students did an incredible job adding details to their self-portraits.

Next, we began investigating our emotions and feelings. We had many discussions and read many books to broaden our understanding of what feelings are. As we read books about feelings an interesting wonder kept repeating itself, 'can feelings be colours?' We read books that specifically address this idea. 

The students linked many colours to various feelings. Lighter colours were happy and darker colours were sad and angry for them. The drew faces of different emotions and painted it the colour they thought best represented that emotion.

We talked about how feelings tell a story.

D.S- excited, blue makes me excited because the sky is blue

I.S- if school is done I’m going to swim in the pool and I am happy 

A.R- I feel happy because I did my daily writing

A.A- I am happy because we can move ourselves

K.T- I feeling surprised because I like presents 

P.D- I was happy yesterday because I got to go swimming 

M.P- I am happy because I like going swimming

B.G- I am happy that I can play at my home

R.H- I am happy because, so that yesterday I go to the swimming pool

M.A- happy (what makes you happy?) mommy, daddy 

D.M- I am happy because you get a paper and draw on it

I.L- I am happy because I am at school

E.K- I am angry when someone is poking me

H.W- happy (what makes you happy?) daddy 

I.D- I am happy because I get to go to school

Y.M- I going park and I am coming there and I play on the iPad, I’m happy

A.H- I am happy because I get to go to school with my sister

S.C-S- (does going to the park with mom make you happy?) nod yes

We explored the different cultures and families in the class.

The languages that are spoken in our classroom

We read many books to help explore different cultures and families.

A big part of the students stories are their friends. They are continually using their new learning about feelings to help them be better friends. We had many discussions about how to be a good friend and what kinds of words to use. I'm sure you've heard them talk about 'filling a bucket', meaning making someone feel happy. They did dramas showing different ways to be a good friend.

We continued to work on our self-portraits, working up to our big art night. The students did another self-portrait on a smaller paper and then drew it on a tile for their final art piece, which they painted.

Self-portrait tiles

We had a celebration evening where we shared our learning with the parents and school community.

Our wall of documentation

Self-portraits, sketches and best part of me description 

Documentation Panels & Inquiry Book

Students' first sketches

A big thank you to everyone who came out to our art night. It was wonderful to share all this learning with you!