Daily and Seasonal Changes Inquiry

At St. Thomas Aquinas, as a part of the Grade 1 Science unit "Daily and Seasonal Changes," we began by reading the picture book City Dog, Country Frog by Mo Williams as a provocation.  The story is about the unique friendship of a dog and a frog over the course of a year.  Throughout the book, the seasons change with wonderful splendor in the illustrations that brings the seasons to life for the students.  However, the changes are subtle and not mentioned in the book.  Following the reading of the book, the students were asked to point out if they noticed anything about nature throughout the story.  One of the students mentioned that the weather changed through the book; another mentioned that the colour of the grass and trees changed; while another introduced the changed in seasons throughout the book.  This led to a discussion about what seasons were.  For the most part the students could name all four seasons.  We then listed all of the things they knew about seasons in general.  Here is what they came up with:

While the students demonstrated some understanding and knowledge about the seasons being about change (some only focused on the current season of autumn), they did have questions about what causes seasonal changes and how they are different from each other.  Here are the questions that they posed that they will answer through our inquiries and investigations:

 

 

This seems like an interesting beginning to our seasonal inquiry!