Festivals, carry the excellent culture formed by a nation in the long history, and accumulate the cultural creation and survival wisdom of mankind. Only with a better understanding of our own culture, can we embrace the world with more confidence and power. Therefore, in this term's inquiry learning, I-EP teachers have integrated the knowledge of festival culture into the inquiry curriculum. Taking "Orientation in Time and Space" as the global context with "Guizhou" as the object of study, we guided our students to expore different festivals of different ethnic groups in Guizhou.
节日，承载着一个国家、一个民族在漫长的历史发展过程中形成的优秀文化，积淀着人类的文化创造和生存智慧。只有更好地了解自己的文化，我们才能更自信地走向世界。因此，在本学期的探究学习中，I-EP的老师们将节日文化融入到了探究课程。我们以“时空定位”为全球背景，把“贵州”作为研究对象，引导学生对贵州不同民族的节日庆典进行探究与分享。
During this long journey of inquiry over a month, G8 students were divided into seven groups to conducted their team project. At the end, they presented the investigating results of the festival which they have chose to the whole MYP community through public presentations.
With the different topics of The Tibetan Festival for the Tibetan, the Flower Dynasty Festival and the Shangyuan Festival of the Han, the Duan Festival of the Shui, the Zhong Yuan Festival of the Dong, the Miao Festival of the Miao, and the Sanyusan of the Buyi, the students collected a lot of information including the origin of the festivals, the regions where the festivals are held, the costumes people wear during the festivals, and so on.
为期一个多月的探究旅程，八年级的学生分为了七个小组，并以小组为单位进行探究学习。最后，他们通过公开演讲的形式向MYP全体社区成员呈现他们对这个节日的探究成果。
藏族的藏历节；汉族的花朝节、上元节；水族的端节；侗族的中元节；苗族的苗年；布依族的三月三，同学们按照各自的选题，搜查并整理了大量相关的信息资料，如：节日的由来、节日盛行的区域，节日中人们会穿的服饰等等。
Practice is more eloquent than the theoretic knowledge. In order to enable our students to better understand the Guizhou's ethnic festivals, we had a meaningful field trip to Guizhou on October. Making good use of this opportunity, students visits to different ethnic communities and actively participates in the local ethnic activities. They not only witnessed the unique charms of Guizhou's ethnic cultures, but also collected rich graphic and textual materials, which provided valuable support for their learning. Through analyzing and studying these resources, they have came up with further thoughts and formed deeper insights about the theme of their inquiry projects.
纸上得来终觉浅，绝知此事要躬行。为了让学生更好地了解贵州，了解他们的民族节日，在10月，我们还带领全体八年级学生去往当地，开展了一次精彩而富有意义的探究之旅。学生们充分利用此次外出的机会，在不同的民族聚居地进行实地探访，并积极参与当地的民族特色活动。他们不仅亲身感受到了贵州各民族文化的独特魅力，还收集了丰富的图文素材，这些都为他们的项目探究提供了宝贵的支持。通过分析和研究这些资料，他们对各自的探究主题有了进一步的思考，也形成了更深刻的见解。
★ 贵州之旅 The Field trip
In the result presentation, students used English to show the MYP members the core values and unique charms of six ethnic groups and seven traditional festivals in Guizhou through various ways such as the drama performances, publicity posters, science experiments, and so on. In the whole process, they have demonstrated excellent public speaking and adaptability
在最终的展示环节里，同学们娴熟地运用英语，通过戏剧表演、宣传海报、科学实验等各种方式向MYP社区成员们展现了贵州6大民族，7个中国传统节日的核心价值与独特魅力。整个过程中，他们展现出了卓越的公开演讲能力与应变协调能力。
The highlight of this inquiry was that in order to convey the essence of each festival, each group worked very hard to create various models and props and prepared beautiful ethnic costumes to give audiences an immersive experience. They combined multiple abilities including drama performance, visual arts, model design, English speaking... showing their great interdisciplinary skills. The final presentations were amazing and reflect strong creativity and expressiveness of our children.
本次探究最大的亮点在于，为了传达每个节日的精髓，每个小组都费尽心思地制作了各式的道具模型，还准备了精美的民族服饰，给人以身临其境的体验。他们的展示结合了戏剧表演、视觉艺术、模型设计、英语演讲等多种技能，将跨学科能力展示得淋漓尽致。他们的最终呈现令人惊叹，极大发挥了孩子们无穷的创造力和表现力。
Throughout the inquiry process, students were given the great independence space and the advancement of the project was always under their control. Not only did the students gain new knowledge, but their thinking skills, social skills, communication skills, research skills, and self-management skills were all improved. We believe that through a series of such inquiry learning projects, our children will be able to develop different ability and become the outstanding lifelong learners!
在整个探究过程中，学生们被赋予了极大的自主学习权，项目的推进始终掌握在他们的手中。这种学习方式不仅让学生们获得了新的知识，他们的思考技能、社交技能、沟通技能、研究技能、自我管理技能都得到了不同程度的提高。我们相信，通过一系列这样的探究式课程学习，我们的孩子定能逐渐培养出面向未来的能力，成为卓尔不群的终身学习者！
