Saturday, January 18, 2014

collaborative science inquiry at Blair

The primary teachers at Blair are taking part in a collaborative inquiry project looking at ways of moving science outdoors as well as ways of documenting science learning in science notebooks.
On Tuesday, I met with the teachers at lunch and then spent time in two classes in the afternoon.

In Tanyia Kusch's grades 2 and 3 class, the students have just begun learning about structures. The students could tell me what they had read about natural and human-made structures so we went for a short walk outside to notice some of these structures and to think about the question, What are structures?

The students then came back into their classroom to draw and label the structures they had seen outside, using their science journals.


As students were recording the structures in their journals, one student wondered, 
"Are people structures?"



The students enjoyed building structures using materials they found in the classroom. We had lots of portables, houses and a tree.




And a little animoto video:



In Karen Sato's grade 1 class, Karen started the class by reading Questions, Questions by Marcus Pfister to inspire the students to ask questions and wonder when we went for a walk outside. We walked around the school park looking for signs of winter.
The students found lots of mud, lots of moss and grass (such a mild winter we are having!) and some branches that had fallen to the ground during the latest storm.


We also found a large deciduous tree with an empty bird nest in. The students had lots of questions about the nest.

Why do birds live in nests?
Why is the tree bare?
How do they make nests?
Why are they are camouflaged?
Why do they make them with sticks?
Why do they only make nests in trees?
How does the nest balance on the tree?

We'll have to re-visit the tree in the spring and see if we see anything new!

~Janice

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