What do we need? What do we want? (As thought by 3A.)

The unit of inquiry that third grade has just begun focuses on "Basic Human Needs."  To start off Monday's class, the only direction my third grade class was given was to work independently to brainstorm things that were important to them.  (If you look on the pictures below, each student is represented with a different colored paper.)  Some students easily filled three pages of paper with lists while others had only five or six items after ten minutes.  After a brief class discussion on needs versus wants (and a video clip from the website "Brain Pop") the students worked on their own to separate their items into piles of things they think they need and things that they want.

On Tuesday, students collaborated with their table mates and compared needs and wants piles.  They were given three blank poster papers and combined their strips to create collages of needs and wants.  Here was the end result of one table after Tuesday's lesson:  

Today, students participated in a "carousel conversation" where they had an opportunity to share their group's posters with three other peers.  It was intriguing to walk around and hear the conversations between my third graders:


***Do we need love to survive?


***Not everyone around the world has a school.  But if I didn't have a school, I think I would die because I wouldn't be getting smarter.  Should I move school to the need poster?


***Are religion and holidays a need or a want?


***Why did you put parents under needs?  My grandma is dead but my mom is still alive.


***Do we need a house to keep us safe?  What if we lived in Africa under a tree?


***If we didn't have clean air, but had dirty air instead, how long would we survive?


It's intriguing to see what my students cherish and what they feel is necessary for life.  When students are given such an open-ended assignment, there is the opportunity for engaging and higher-level discussions that stem from their interests and passions.  I look forward to continuing this discussion with my class as we move onto Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.


Happy Hump Day!
-Megan