Cryptic messages, a mysterious voicemail, and strange hand delivered notes have occupied the prep neighbourhood this fortnight as our inquiry continues to grow and evolve. Grey Beard has featured heavily in our inquiry over the past few weeks, as we continue to explore sustainability and the concept of different objects being made out of different materials, depending on their intended purpose. We then set about categorising and sorting these materials based on their observable properties.
Starting with all the rubbish we collected in the school, we had a provocation for the children to organise the rubbish into: ‘hard plastics’, ‘soft plastics’, ‘mixed materials’ and ‘other’. It was a great chance to look at the objects more closely and classify them according to their different characteristics. Whilst we are still making our way through the rubbish, we plan to wash, and reuse the items to make a neighbourhood creation!
In line with our pirate theme, the children created a paper boat with their buddies last week. We then conducted a neighbourhood experiment to predict and observe if it would float or sink. The group had an animated discussion sharing their predictions:
- Edmund- “You need to put metal underneath so it doesn’t sink”
- Jade- “I did this at my kinder and you need to put bubble wrap on the bottom to make it float”
- Teo – “The metal will make it rust”
- Wren- “That’s why boats are made out of wood, they float”
- Tigerlily- “You need to cover them in plastic”
- Teo- “Or paint…that might make it stop rusting”
- Wren- “You can’t paint metal, it just falls off”
- Bell – “I think 20 minutes (before it sinks)”
- Hugo – “Zero minutes, it won’t float”
- Edmund – “It will sink! But, we need to try it out!”
So an eager group of scientists took turns throughout the day to monitor the boat during provocations, taking notes on a clipboard to keep track of its time at sea. In spite of our predictions, the paper boat remained afloat for the entire day! We then discussed what other materials we could use to make a similar boat, and concluded we need to trial a foil boat, a baking paper boat, and a cardboard boat, so we can learn how these materials interact with water and whether it might impact on their buoyancy.
Our inquiry has also included some very special people this fortnight… our wonderful Mums and Special Carers! In preparation for Mother’s Day (and our upcoming assembly) the children have been thinking deeply about all the incredible, and extensive things our mums do for us, which we discussed as ‘wearing many different hats’. There were love hats, chef hats, taxi hats, doctor and nurse hats, storytelling and maths hats, even video game hats! They are very excited to present their thoughts and creations during our assembly on Friday. And, of course, happy Mother’s Day to all our incredible Mums for this weekend!
After a professional learning day for the teachers, we were lucky enough to have Professor Marilyn Fleer from Monash University work alongside us for a new model of teaching called ‘Conceptual PlayWorlds’. “PlayWorlds start with a story. Then both adults and children enter an imaginary world. Playing together, they solve challenges and learn concepts in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)”
The prep-neighbourhood is already heavily invested in our pirate story, and engaged in learning around sustainability, so we planned for some characters to come in and recap on all the learning that has occurred. We had reporters Suzanne Swisslesdorf and Walter Cronkite from ABC Kids come and interview the students this week. Initially, there was plenty of excitement, “No, it’s just Connie and Robert dressed up”, and as we reminded them that we can all transform into characters for our playworlds, they joined in by asking Suzaane and Walter questions and telling them significant parts of the story so far. We will continue to explore properties of materials through this conceptual playworld, and invite the children to join us in character next week for the next adventure.