Grade 4 - How We Express Ourselves "Beliefs Influence Personal Expression"

Today, our How We Express Ourselves unit came to end with a Celebration of Learning including a museum of art and poetry created by the students.  Let's take a look at how we got there!

We started tuning in to the unit with the question, "What are beliefs?"  A few students had some general ideas about them being something "real" or "true",  but as the discussion deepened it became more known that they were something that one person may think is true but another may not.  Beliefs also seemed to be very important to us.  We thought about some beliefs that we may have been showing during our Who We Are unit about having certain mindsets and ways of thinking.  

Most students had never thought about what their beliefs were so we started to brainstorm. 

We then started finding out about the different ways to express yourself and multiple forms of art.  We looked deeper into analyzing art and finding different meanings and perspectives using symbolism.  We learned about different forms of poetry and ways of using words to express ourselves.  

One student inquired about "Where do we get our beliefs from?" and "Why do we have different beliefs?" when she was sorting things out.

Then, students went further taking action with their own beliefs and finding forms of art that felt right to express them with.  They researched different art techniques, analyzed and observed different professional art, and combined that with their own creativity and knowledge to begin creating.  

And today, the students excitedly shared their learning with parents and visitors who came to our classroom's museum of belief art!