We had an amazing time last week for book week dressing up as our favourite characters. Our class was graced with the presence of none other than Mr Stink, Dog Man, Gandalf, Harry Potter, Fitz, The Savages and some spectacular Greek Gods and Demigods, to name but a few. We were blown away with the care and kindness that our students exhibited toward younger members of the school community during the day’s activities.
Students have built on their Mathematical understandings, focusing on accurate and standardised measurement skills to compliment their floor plans and designs. We are also investigating properties of 2-dimensional shapes and exploring ways to categorise and describe them, using mathematical terminology. Students have used Lego to explore area as regular rectangular arrays, which will lead into more formal measurement of shapes, that they may incorporate into the designs of their buildings.
Students are excitedly looking at how their designed buildings can cope with the stresses our changing world and environment might put upon them. This week’s high winds, hail and blowing rain brought home to us just how nature can have a big impact on us. We will do some follow-up science on ‘what is hail, how does it form, & what damage it can do during wild weather?’ We are thinking about how we can do some actual stress testing of our models: could they survive a downpour? What surfaces could we apply to waterproof them? What ’wind’ can they handle? Can we actually collect & store water from them?
Designs are being turned into ‘first attempt’ model structures. We are finding out that models are a great way to try out our ideas and test concepts, and discovering some of the challenges of making ‘realistic’ models. In inquiry workshops we focused on making scaled-up and scaled-down drawings of animals, objects, furniture and ourselves. We hope that this means we develop a better idea of what our designed shapes and spaces would ‘feel’ and look like in real life. Shrinking ourselves to 1/50th size (so that one centimetre equates to 50cm, as in Henry TB’s redesigned Discovery Centre, pictured above) was challenging, but is enabling excellent learning.
Some students have been taking their exploration of miniature worlds into the playground, creating a model village, including roads, bridges, storage buildings, homes, a temple, and defensive dikes and ditches. As teachers we are excited to capture this interest and explore this further, building on their rich imaginations.