Chemical Changes And Conversation Mapping

For the last part of this term we will be investigating some material changes. When we first discussed the science-based inquiry theme for this term, as is usually the case, many children thought of blowing things up.

This week we have had some discussions around chemical changes in groups. Those conversations were mapped and we were able to not only reflect on the content of our discussions, but also our behaviours and the environment we had created.

Some interesting questions were raised, so we may conduct a couple of experiments over the next week or two (trying to keep explosions to a minimum).

Kites Inquiry - Part Three

Is it just a Christchurch thing that we won't get a lot of wind in Winter time?

We've only been able to get outside once or twice with suitable kite flying conditions. Most of us have finished our kites, but we just need to collect flight evidence and finish our documentation.

Despite some weather frustrations, it has been a great inquiry. We've learned a lot, not only about physical forces and change, but also about planning, managing and documenting a personal investigation.

Here's some footage we've collected so far. We'll post more media when we can...

Time - Filling In The Gaps

This term we've looked at several types of measurement. In many ways, improving our knowledge of measurement has helped us to gain a better understanding of our inquiry investigations.

One thing we know we can measure is 'time'. However, with some honest discussion we've found that some of us really struggle to tell the time, while a large number of children have no problem with it at all. This is before we've undertaken many specifically 'time-related' maths investigations this year.

While we had a multi-strand problem solving challenge set up this morning for most children, we also had a couple of special groups running. These groups were run by individual children who considered themselves 'time experts'. Any children who felt they needed to fill in some knowledge gaps and had some questions they wanted answering were able to 'drop-in' to these special groups.

Judging by our conversations afterwards, the groups were valuable to those children who opted in to them. Some interesting questions were raised that could lead into great inquiries alone (e.g. "Why don't we just have ten hour days?" - It would make things easier, wouldn't it?).

Learner response: How does being able to tell the time enable you as a learner?

Beauty of Mathematics

One of our tasks this week was to view this video by Yann Pineill & Nicolas Lefaucheux.


BEAUTY OF MATHEMATICS from PARACHUTES on Vimeo.

It really raised some interesting questions about what's going on. Even for adults, there are concepts in the video that you would require specialised knowledge to understand. 

We shared our ideas on a SEE, THINK, WONDER chart and were able to make some connections to our current inquiry theme. Can you pick which part of the video had us making connections to our kite investigations?