Spicewood Elementary School Expressing ourselves is a basic human need. From the very physical or tactile to verbal or visually, we all find ways to express our feelings about topics important to us. Some people may feel called to the arts to channel their creativity and ideas, while others chose career paths that provide them daily opportunities to be creative in their industry.
How We Express Ourselves is one of the six transdisciplinary themes that our students explore within the PYP program. This unit of inquiry provides all students, Kindergarten to 5th grade, an opportunity to explore how feelings, ideas, culture, creativity, beliefs, and values. Our fifth graders are currently conducting their inquiry within this unit for their exhibition, exploring the central idea, “Creative expression can inspire people to take action.”, while our Kindergarten students are investigating how different texts (fiction and nonfiction) are a form of expression across the globe. In addition to the units unfolding in the classrooms, our Inquiry Lab up provides a space for all students to be creative, tinker with ideas, and express themselves and show what they have learned with variety of materials.
(from left to right) Students utilize maker materials to create ecosystems and show changes that can occur in an ecosystem, students engage in an nonfiction scavenger hunt to identify how authors use these features to help their readers, students debate if the Fearless Girl sculpture placed in front of Charging Bull is a copyright violation.
With that in mind, here are a few resources that might help you invite your child into more at-home conversations about the concept of expression, perhaps sparking additional wonderings or connections to the learning that is taking place in the classroom!
Provocation Questions (questions to use either before or after the video/book resources below):
- What does it mean to express ourselves?
- Why do we feel the need to express ourselves?
- How does the way we choose to express ourselves impact our lives? How does it impact the lives of others?
- Does self expression look different around the world?
- What does growth mindset have to do with self expression?
- How can self expression help someone else see the world differently?
- How can self expression sometimes be unexpected?
Resources:
- The figurative sculptures of a 12-year-old found objects artist by The Kid Should See This
- Why Do I Study Physics? by Shixie
- The Adaptable Mind by The Moxie Institute
- “The Big Orange Splot” by Daniel Pinkwater
- “Rosie Revere, Engineer” by Andrea Beaty and David Roberts