Introduction Kindergarten Grades One and Two Grades Three and Four Online Games and Activities Culminating Experience Train Glossary National Standards		Culminating Experience: Train of Thought - An Inquiry Project Getting Started - Choosing a Topic: By now students have learned a lot about trains and are beginning to identify many more things that they want to learn. Help students read their Big Book of Trains or their individual Train of Thought journals to review what they know. Remind students of some of the stories, objects and pictures they have enjoyed and ask them if these make them think of things about trains that they would like to know more about. Share your own experiences, such as riding a train as a child, and help students discuss experiences and individual interests. Try to find out if there are some common themes. Help students to focus on the project topic by asking questions like these: What do you want to know more about? If you could talk to a train expert, what would you ask? What would you like to see and do with trains? What parts of a train would you like to draw, paint, photograph or model from clay? Use the discussion to help students develop a series of questions that they would like to have answered. Record students' questions using a web or chart on poster paper or butcher paper. Family Connections: As soon as a topic emerges, it is important to let families know about plans for the inquiry. Families may have experiences and information to share at home or may be resource persons for the classroom. They can also help guide field trips, provide opportunities at home to discuss ideas, check on progress, and serve as an audience for culminating presentations and products. Researching the Topic - Fieldwork: Once students have some questions mapped out, they have a focus for gathering data and information. Work with the media specialist to help students identify a wide range of sources, including primary documents and sources outside the classroom and school. Fieldwork provides a way for students to engage in firsthand, direct observation and experience. This can include visits to a real setting and interviews with people who have experience with the topic. In some cases, interviews can be conducted by phone. Students can help to plan a field trip to a museum or another site and accept responsibility for making drawings, documenting the visit and recording the information that they find. On site, they can be encouraged to use their observation skills to look for similarities and differences. They can also plan the kinds of questions they will ask of persons they will interview on site or in the classroom. Secondary sources of information to examine at this time might include books, magazines, newspapers and Web sites. Back in the Classroom: Having students communicate what they have observed and heard firsthand helps them to make sense of information and experiences that they have had. Modes of communication may include drawing or making a model of a train that they have actually seen from found objects, clay or other materials. Another way to help students integrate their personal thoughts and experiences is through dramatic play and role-playing activities. For example, students might imagine what it would be like if they were members of a family about to take a trip on The Reuben Wells. What would they be feeling as they stand on the platform by the big engine? What would they say to each other? What would they say when they get on board and feel the movement of the train? The work that students produce as they consolidate and organize information can be stored in personal folders or displayed in the classroom. Project display areas can be set up throughout the room as a way of recording students' newly developed knowledge for their own use and conveying it to others. Concluding the Inquiry: The culmination of the project helps students bring closure to their work and demonstrate their knowledge and mastery of the topic. Bring students together to discuss and summarize what they have learned so that there is a sense of shared accomplishment. Then assist students as they make plans to communicate the results of their inquiry to an audience outside of their own classroom, such as another grade level or parents, or through a group presentation or demonstration of a product. After the inquiry is complete, it is important for the teacher and students to evaluate the results of the project together. It is also important to help students carry out some form of self-assessment and reflect upon what they have learned individually. After cleaning up and storing the materials from the completed inquiry, students will be ready to go on to the next project. An inquiry project is never really over. It is always there to serve as a building block for a new experience, perhaps a project on other forms of transportation, a storybook- or poetry-making project, a train song festival, or an examination of the ideas expressed in different art forms. The power of trains is the power to search and explore new ideas. Teacher Resource: Katz, Lilian G. and Sylvia C. Chard. Engaging Children's Minds: The Project Approach. Stamford, Conn.: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 2000. Many of the suggestions above have been derived from this introduction and guide to project work, as well as from classroom teachers of young children.