Light travels faster than sound

Weather science…what P1-3 learned today, in their own words.

Here’s the great cloud experiment…with a “how to” guide from P1-3

http://www.edmodo.com/file?id=720b07f7be79aecd0a73ce82d5264d8f

I will add to this post in a bit - sorry, poor blogging there!

A wee pedagoo type moment that I’d forgotten to post on Monday…

Working on the science topic with a P1-3 class, I’d given them the task of beginning some Linnaean classification (half remembered from my own 5th and 6th year biology classes!) by sorting a page of animal pictures into groups any way they liked as long as they could say why they’d done it. 

Giving children autonomy in this way is at the very heart of the Curriculum for Excellence - allowing them to be responsible for their own learning and facilitating (yuk, what a word) personalisation and choice. There were pictures of fish, a snail, a cow, various cats (big and small), birds and so forth.

This wasn’t the full set of animals incidentally; and how did the class (in their pairs) sort them? As I said, any way they liked.

So we got one pair putting the hermit crab and the snail together (shells) whilst another put the crab with the frog and the penguin on the basis that they can all live in water whilst putting the snail in with the birds on the basis that “they have less than four legs” (cats, dogs, cows, etc all went in their quadroped pile)

No right or wrong answers. Loads of discussion. A practical activity. A context they could identify with easily and child led assessment via feedback on what they thought of other pairs’ groupings.

Take your pick from any of the boxes you might wish to tick…if you’re that way inclined:

I recognise that we have similarities and differences but are all unique.

HWB 0-47a

By comparing generations of families of humans, plants and animals, I can begin to understand how characteristics are inherited.

SCN 1-14a

I can distinguish between living and non living things. I can sort living things into groups and explain my decisions.

SCN 1-01a

When I engage with others, I know when and how to listen, when to talk, how much to say, when to ask questions and how to respond with respect.

*Responsibility of all

LIT 1-02a

I can select ideas and relevant information, organise these in a logical sequence and use words which will be interesting and/or useful for others.

*Responsibility of all

LIT 1-06a

Who knew chapsticks could be so much fun?

What a great afternoon we had today with the primary 4-7 class. Their current topic is movies and films - so much scope there to work with in the context of the Curriculm for Excellence. It hardly takes a quantum leap of imagination to realise you can get art, ICT, language and any amounts of other exciting things in there…

I’ve been tasked with the science and technology side of things - but what to do? How about a wee bit of social history to start with? People and place - Victorian Zoetropes anyone? How about we actually make one ? Thank you Scholastic, I think we will…

Where to next with this one then? Well, having made - and more importantly understood - a simple zoetrope today we can move onto constucting our own picture strips to include in a cd-zoetrope (see the Howtoons.com video) which will allow the children to gain a deeper understanding of the animation process in turn leading us into the possibilities of stop-motion work and beyond…the world is our lobster [sic]…

What did we do today?

Some science with the wee ones - into the hall to throw (or attempt to throw) some paper about in the hope of learning a little about aerodynamics. Success rating? 5 out of 5 - all engaged, loads of good questions, answers and theories from the little people.

CfE links?

By investigating forces on toys and other objects, I can predict the effect on the shape or motion of objects.

By investigating how friction, including air resistance, affects motion, I can suggest ways to improve efficiency in moving objects.