Interest Projects - All Wrapped Up For Christmas

It has been so satisfying for many of us sharing our term four interest projects.

One way we ensure that we are taking ownership, accountability and responsibility for our learning in Room 14 is through the sharing routines we have. During our first I.P. this year, sharing in front of the class seemed a little daunting for some. However, the encouragement shown for each other and the ability to give constructive feedback has grown to such a level that sharing interest projects is a positive experience and a time for celebration. The conversation arising after the sharing of an interest project is genuinely exciting as students often realise that they are the most knowledgeable person in the room about their chosen topic, which can be so empowering when answering questions from their peers.

Those who initially found driving their own projects a challenge have made great progress. Being handed more responsibility and knowing that the teacher is only assisting as a guide was something to get their heads around at first. Of course, there are still things that all of us could have improved on this time, but our skills and attitudes for self-driven inquiry projects have grown a lot as a class.

We had a 'How Stuff Works' theme of sorts this time. It was wonderful seeing how deep some students could get into their questions and how they could communicate some very technical, jargon-filled scientific explanations in a way that we could all understand. Jacob's 'How do batteries work?', Kerryn's 'How does lightning work?' and Izyah's 'How do earphones work?' projects were nice examples of this.








Before putting together our presentations, we co-created a sharing rubric together that included what we thought would make a great presentation, as well as a couple of aspects of our last I.P. sharing days that we needed to work on. We assessed ourselves after receiving feedback from our peers and Mr K. See the completed rubrics in our digital portfolios.



Next year we will look at how the I.P. format could fit in with our learning programmes. For our Year 6s that are leaving us, we hope that these interest projects have given them a chance to further develop their 21st century learning skills and attitudes, which we hope they can utilise wherever they are heading.

Cluster Tech Challenge

We recently had our cluster technology challenge. Our class and Room 5 at Bamford School took part.

The idea was that we would be undertaking the same challenges from our own schools, but would key an eye out (digitally) about how the other teams were doing.

The first challenge was to build a free-standing tower using certain materials that could raise a flag.

The second challenge was a paper planes contest. Students could enter both a 'flight distance' and a 'flight time' competition.

These activities linked well with our Forces and Motion theme, so children were able to use some of the language and scientific terms we have been learning about.

Thanks to Wayne for coming along, giving a hand and showing us your own paper plane designs.



Check out the Linwood Connected Kids blog for some of our reflections and more info.

Marble Tracks

This week we have begun our Forces and Motion unit of inquiry. Gravity and friction are the key ideas we have been investigating, and have been the focus of two hands-on technology challenges in our classroom.

In the first challenge we were required to make a ramp to certain specifications. We then predicted how far a marble would roll along the ground when let go from the top of the ramp.

After measuring the actual distance rolled and comparing with our estimates, we had some great discussions around our understanding of gravity and friction. It was most interesting hearing what everyone thought was in the centre of the Earth. Answers included "special stones", "rocks" and "black stuff". Some ideas there for further investigation.


The second challenge features in the video below.



As predicted by some of us, it certainly was a challenge working in groups of 4 or 5. Many people often have different ideas on what will work best in situations like this, so the designated 'team managers' had a busy job.

We agreed that some of the construction work wasn't pretty. But it was good to see everyone searching hard for materials that could serve a purpose (you may have noticed all of the random maths equipment and stationery items being used!).

A couple of groups managed to complete the task and others came very close. The most common challenge was the marble losing too much speed by crashing into walls. All groups realised that they needed to do what they could to maintain the marble's speed (provided by gravity), while keeping it on track to cross each piece of masking tape.

We will be reflecting on what we noticed during this challenge, while exploring more of the physical world around us over the coming weeks.

Consumerism - What Needs To Change?

This term we have read, heard and viewed a lot of interesting stories and documentaries about our basic consumer cycle. By this, we mean the 'work, get paid, buy stuff' cycle we blogged about several weeks ago.

The more we have learned, the more we have come to accept that we all play an active part in this system, and in many ways we are dependent on it. As kids, we have fewer choices than adults, but we know that one day we will be the leaders in our communities and will have more of an influence over the people and places we interact with.

Last week we watched a documentary called The Story of Stuff. It explains how our materials economy works and the negative impacts it has on our planet right through the system, from the extraction of raw materials from the Earth, to when we dispose of the products consumed.

We have learned a lot about note taking. Through taking both written and visual notes, we have been able to pull out what we believe are the most important pieces of information from the videos/texts we have been using to gain a broader understanding of this topic. Some of the notes taken about The Story of Stuff truly were hives of information that we could call upon later. We have examples on display in our classroom.

Many of us have been talking about how we need to change the way we live in order for us to have a more sustainable future. But would anyone listen to us? Aren't kids too young to know what's best? We watched a TED Talk by Adora Svitak called 'What adults can learn from kids'. The consensus we made from this is that kids do come up with great ideas. If we are to be adults one day, surely we should have a voice about the world that is waiting for us.

This week Mr K put a question our TV - 'What needs to change?'. It was great to see the responses. Through our statements, we can see a deep understanding of this topic being developed and how far we have come from the first Chalk Talk routine. From Jacob's quote about how if consumers stop buying certain things, companies that negatively affect our environment will go out of business, to Jen's statement about how Boxing Day sales and other huge consumer 'field days' can be chaotic and leave people possibly feeling like they need to buy lots of things they don't really need.

(We have put our names to our individual quotes on our classroom walls)

So where to now? Well, we have all decided on one of three project ideas to pursue...

1. Create and present detailed explanations about how our materials economy works
2. Create and present a TED Talk of our own, sharing some of the ideas we have to fix the consumer system.
3. Create visual displays that carry strong messages from us about how we can make positive changes to our school environment.

The animations/screen-casting group have begun learning about storyboarding, with some already drafting their creations on large displays.

The TED Talks group have started investigating what makes a good speech, as well as how using Google Slides for a presentation allows them to read their own speaker notes while projecting the slide imagery through a screen using Apple TV.

The visual displays groups have been brainstorming things we do at our school that have negative environmental effects.

Over the past two days, we have been discussing a lot about what success will look like for these projects. We are all striving for excellence, which is in our learner licence criteria, and are trying to become 'learning leaders' by shifting the thinking of others. We look forward to sharing our presentations with you.

Chalk Talk, The Environment And Buying 'Stuff'

This week we have been looking at a number of provocations around our Term 3 theme, 'Consumerism'. Early discussions, thoughts and ideas have been meaningful and will seemingly set us up for some powerful lines of inquiry this term.

We began by defining what we mean by "the environment". For those of you who know a little about our Room 14 values and vision, the term 'learning environment' is a common part of our vocabulary. But this is not what we mean by 'the environment' in this new context, so we needed to clarify that this was considering the natural world and all that exists in it.

Mr K then shared with us this simple diagram:

We all understood this. This is how the consumer system basically works, isn't it? You work, get paid, then buy stuff. Work, get paid, buy stuff. And it goes on.

But how does this affect our natural environment?

We were introduced to a new thinking routine called 'Chalk Talk'. In this routine, students are in groups of 3-5, gathered around a sheet of paper. They are given an idea or a question to discuss. Only this is not a verbal discussion. Students need to convey their ideas by writing or drawing diagrams and images. Any responses to what others say, need to be in written form. The outcome here is that we have our thinking represented visually. It allows for students to have no interruptions, while giving those who are often reluctant to share their ideas with a large group the confidence to have their voice heard.

Our question was:
What effects does this system (diagram above) have on the environment?

Our responses generated a lot of interesting ideas for discussion. Most groups mentioned the cutting down of trees for wood and paper products and how deforestation is an environmental issue. Phoebe's thoughts about plastics, most notably that oil is needed to make it, really fuelled conversation. We talked about the distance in which many of the things we buy travel before they even get to us, and what happens when we are finished with them.

Mr K used the coffee he bought before school as an example. He walked into his local coffee shop in the morning for a cup, that was made of printed cardboard with a plastic lid, filled with coffee, sugar and milk. He handed over $5.00, consumed the coffee, then put the cup in the bin. Is that the end of the cycle? We suspected that it probably wasn't. Once our red bin is collected by the City Council, most children knew where the contents ends up.

We then used a personal example - A meal from McDonalds. This led to a very lively discussion about the whole chain of events that happens before we hand over the money for one of those.

So what? We wondered how this system can be improved. At this stage, we aren't quite sure. But we do know that with food, the best way to make the system environmentally friendly is to produce your own.

Room 14's new challenge is to work out how we can grow vegetables in our classroom. We will be using recycled materials to design and build containers or structures that can house our produce. We will also be investigating how plants even grow (!) and how we can maintain them, while making links to other learning areas, like measurement and statistics, where possible. A number of us have already been generating ideas about how this will link with our explanation and persuasive writing focus too.

Today we watched Jamie Oliver's TED Talk about how we should teach every child about food, which was really the icing on the cake (maybe not the best pun) as to why we should be learning about how to grow our own vegetables and how this may benefit us in the future.

Our next step is to decide how we will group ourselves, where we will find information and materials, and how we will design these systems.

Here are our responses to the Chalk Talk routine:

Land Yacht Racing

Today was the day that we lined up our land yachts for our final races.

As part of our syndicate inquiry rotation, children coming to Room 14 have been designing and building land yachts. For some of us, we were able to build on our knowledge from the kites we built in Term Two.

As with the kites, we researched forces on a land yacht, planned our designs, organised materials, constructed various prototypes, and tested them.

Check out some footage of our races today. A few crashes and swirling winds, but an enjoyable day celebrating what we've created.

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...

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?

Kites Inquiry - Part Two

Kites Inquiry - Part One

Simple Machines

Check out our video from Friday's assembly. We've been investigating simple machines. How could what we have learned help us to make predictions about a machine many of us know very well?