With our Rainbow Inquiry continuing to unfold over the past month, we started noticing our Student Scientists brainstorming ways to create rainbows using a variety of materials in our classroom. From prisms held up to the window to flashlights shining through transparent coloured paddles, our students have been actively exploring their fascination and wonderings around how a rainbow is born! 

To support our students' curiousity and to help drive the momentum of our current inquiry forward, Heidi and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to introduce a simple experiment to not only help students further embrace themselves as scientists, but to help shed light on the thinking and reflection that scientists do when undergoing investigations! Keeping in mind that this learning has taken place over a series of weeks and not always with the whole group, Heidi and I have made and continue to make intentional and purposeful decisions based on our documentation of student learning.

Big Question: Can we make a rainbow?

Each group had:1 flashlight, 2 CDs, 1 prism, 1 mirror, 1 jar/tray with water, 1 piece of white paper, a Thinking Mat and markers

As a Rainbow Team, our students worked in small groups of 4-5 to see what materials would work best to make a rainbow.

Using a variety of materials, students took turns experimenting in different ways while the other members of their group looked closely for the appearance of a rainbow. 

Heidi and I circulated amongst all the groups with our iPads in hand and the camera/video ready to go to not only capture their excitement but to also record students' use of problem-solving skills, conversations, and discoveries. 

It was truly wonderful to see our student scientists work with the experiment materials in ways that we didn't anticipate and still successfully create a rainbow! I think I can speak for Heidi in saying that this elevated our excitement level ten-fold not only because of our student's "out-of-box" thinking, but also because of how well they collectively worked together by honouring each other's ideas, taking risks, and persevering when it didn't work!

To consolidate our learning, we met back on the carpet in the form of a Scientist Circle to showcase all the captured moments on our iPads. Students were so excited to see photos of their created rainbows, videos of their conversations and were eager to report on what worked and didn't work as part of their investigation in addition to what we discovered and what we still wonder about.

Moreover, after celebrating our findings that our student scientists did in fact make a rainbow, we turned to our class twitter account only to find a Kindergarten class from Thornwood Public School (@MsDuric) also experimenting and inquiring about rainbows! This took on a whole new level of excitement whereby our class was eager to ask questions and share our discoveries with them:

All in all, we were thrilled to see that our experiment brought together peer learning, science, and literacy into an authentic exploration while at the same time supporting our curriculum expectations in a meaningful 

way for our students. 

BIG IDEA: Children are curious and connect prior knowledge to new contexts in order to understand the world around them.

Overall Expectations:
1. Demonstrate an awareness of the natural and built environment through hands-on investigations, observations, questions and representations of their findings. 
2. Conduct simple investigations through free exploration, focused exploration, and guided activity, using inquiry skills (questioning, planning, predicting, observing, communicating).

Specific Expectations:
1.1 Ask questions about and describe some natural occurrences and representations (e.g. drawings, writing).
2.2 Make predictions and observations before and during investigations.
2.4 Communicate results and findings from individual and group investigations (e.g. state simple conclusions from an experiment, record ideas using pictures, numbers, and labels).

How is a rainbow born?

After visiting Acorn School, a Reggio-Inspired school in Richmond Hill, as part of our CTInquiry network group (Connected Through Inquiry) a few weeks ago, Heidi and I felt inspired by one of their documentation pieces displayed. This documentation piece was a collaborative story written by their Junior Preschoolers and Senior Preschoolers of the school. Heidi and I absolutely loved how they co-created a story with their students around an inquiry question and thus, we adopted the idea while making it our own for our Rainbow Inquiry to follow suit with one of the initial wonderings posed by C.S (JK). 

To set a context for this post, I would like to highlight that much thinking and learning occurred within the walls of our classroom over the past few weeks that led up to this collaborative story being created by our students. With our students actively adopting the role of a "Scientist" as part of this environmental inquiry, whether it be through our daily conversations, sharing and building on each other's thinking and in connection to various literacy experiences and scientific explorations (e.g. read alouds, shared reading, experimentation, etc), as a teaching team, we made the conscious and purposeful decision to tie in this unique learning opportunity in a way that was unique to us and our learners. In doing so, we hope that this post illustrates to you that this was not something we saw and then "replicated," but rather this learning moment was something that was complimentary to our students theories and thinking about rainbows and where they come from.  

A special thanks to our good friend and inspiring colleague, Angie Harrison, for pushing our own thinking as a teaching team around how to make visible to our blog followers that as much as this post highlights a "product," there was still a process involved that got our learners and us as a teaching team to this point in our inquiry. 

Image captured from Acorn School during our visit

How is a rainbow born?

A Collaborative Story created by the Junior Kindergarten and Senior Kindergarten students 

in Ms. Schmidt & Ms. Theis’ class

A rainbow is born with just the air (E.Sz). The rainbow is also born with the sun (D.K). A rainbow can be born during the rain or after the rain in the sky (E.S). My thinking is when the rainbow starts it goes one colour to the other colour, to the other colour and that’s how it grows (C.S). 

The first colour is red. It is hot (M.P). The second colour is orange (R.T). It is warmish (L.M). The third colour is yellow (P.B). It is like the sun (V.D). The fourth colour is green (E.Sz). It feels like the grass (Z.P). The fifth colour is blue. It is like the sky (R.K). The last colour is purple (M.D). It feels soft (R.V). 

I see the rainbow start from the left and it looks like a semi-circle (E.S). Maybe the other half of the circle is in the ground? (T.B) The colours disappear but the rainbow is still there until another day of rain (E.S). When the rainbow camouflages in the air, it breaks off and turns into air (T.L). 

Then a new one is born (Z.P). 

But how? (T.D.)

We'd like to extend our sincerest thanks to Acorn School for opening their doors and welcoming us so kindly into their inspiring learning space! 

We hope to visit again very soon!

Somewhere over the rainbow...

Spring has sprung (finally!) and a lot of exciting things are unfolding in our classroom! To provide you with some context of where we are now, I'd like to highlight where we started from over a month ago whereby our students had shown a profound interest in putting on "plays." In order to honour their interests, we worked with our students to help rearrange our learning space to provoke and support their curiousity by turning one area of our classroom into a puppet theatre! After much excitement and many celebrated performances, a few students realized that we didn't have a name for our theatre! After a small group of students brainstormed some possibilities, one SK student (E.S.) decided to create a survey and collect data from her peers around what we should name our theatre based on the four collected names. 

Little did we know, that the winning name itself would shift their gears to begin inquiring about a completely new topic! "Rainbow 126" was the most popular name voted on and that has now opened the doors to our students wonderings about rainbows!

Here are a some of our colourful theories:

What does a rainbow look like?

It looks kind of like a semi-circle because a semi-circle really looks like a rainbow because it’s half of a circle. - D.K. (SK)

A rainbow is like this (makes an arch motion). It’s good because then it’s like a slide and maybe you can sleep on it! - R.V. (JK)

To make a rainbow, you need water because the word “rain” is in rainbow! 

- T.B. (SK)

I see that when rain comes you see a rainbow! It looked like there was red, orange, yellow, green, blue and pink! - J.Si. (SK)

Where do we see rainbows?

We see rainbows when there’s lots of rain and when the rain stops. We see it start on the ground and it reflects on the sky. “Reflects” means that the same things goes on that one thing. - D.K. (SK)

One time, I saw a water sprinkler and then the sun comes out and then I saw a rainbow you know? - Z.P. (SK)

I saw a rainbow in my cousin’s house. I saw it in the washroom and I caught it and then it got out of my hand. When the sun went away the rainbow did too. But then I found it again when the light comes back. - M.D. (JK)

In the sky where the sunlight is! Rainbows don’t live inside our house. Rainbows can shine on people you know? I was driving in my car and I saw it in the sky! 

-R.V. (JK)

Sometimes where it’s a beautiful rainy day and when it stops raining a rainbow appears. It looks like a beautiful rising colours in the sky! - C.S. (JK)

In the sky! It has to be day time because the sun helps and you can’t see a rainbow in the dark. - R.K. (SK)

Can you catch a rainbow?

When you touch a rainbow, it goes on your hand. It just feels like air so you can’t slide down because you’ll fall. It’s too high and there’s no oxygen there. 

- E.Sz. (SK)

No it’s because rainbows disappear after a long time and they come back when the rain stops. - R.K. (SK)

I think you can’t because rainbows are too big to get in a net and you can’t really hold a rainbow. When you touch a rainbow your hand goes right through it! It’s made of air too. - D.K. (SK)

I think it’s made out of sunlight. - S.R. (JK)

Rainbows are nothing but colours in the air. - T.L. (SK)

Some of our wonderings...

I wonder if rainbows fade and disappear? - M.P. (SK)

I wonder how the colours pop out? 

- E.S. (SK)

I wonder where rainbows come from? 

- J.H. (SK)

I wonder how a rainbow is born? 

- C.S. (JK)

I wonder why rainbows have different colours? - J.Sa. (SK)

To fast-forward a few weeks, our class has been actively engaged as Scientists as we continue to generate new theories, pose and answer our wonderings and collect information based on our discoveries and our own experiences with rainbows! Stay tuned for a post that highlights our first of many rainbow experiments!