How the World Works Inquiry - Wk 5

Exploring the concepts of living and non-living; growth and change and animal lifecycles

Throughout Play and Inquiry Learning time this week some students continued projects on planting and bug collecting/observation. 

Students in the planting group continued to observe their plants each day and record their observations. After their parsley seeds were initially drowned by a down pour they planted new cress and fennel seeds and put them on the window ledge in room 13. Some over sowing ensued and they watched their seedlings emerge. Students used descriptive terms to compare the length of the plants that grew. They measured them with tiny blocks and counted how many blocks long their plants were.  They were involved in discussion describing the process of measuring and comparing. They also used blocks to compare the size of seeds from the display box. Students harvested their cress seeds and tasted them. They thought the cress tasted peppery.

Students bug collecting wrote a list of all the bugs they had managed to collect. Then they counted how many of each bug they found and placed tally marks beside the name of each. With this information, students transferred the results onto a pictograph. When the graph was completed students reflected on the results, finding which bugs were the least and most frequent in the garden and drawing conclusions as to why. Students concluded their project by constructing bugs out of craft materials. They made bees and ladybirds. They used the information from their bug diaries to ensure their bugs were the right colours and had the correct number of legs, wings and antennas.

In this week’s Integrated Inquiry Workshop students reflected on the Cycles of Life Workshop undertaken at the Zoo last week and how this has contributed to their understanding of how animals grow and change. Students discussed the subject of ‘Lifecycles’ and created a concept map to display what they know about this topic. Non-fiction texts were shared about lifecycles of various animals and plants and students selected an animal or plant to draw its lifecycle. They had a go at writing about what was happening in each stage and shared their work.