The Peppercorns 10s & 11s
Unit of Inquiry: How the World Works
Central Idea: The world is constantly evolving through natural events and human influence.
The Peppercorns have been busy researching our ever changing world through the conceptual lenses of ‘form’, ‘causation’ and ‘change’.
We started the Term designing and testing simple machines. After a few chats over the class phone (2 cups connected by a string), we started to wonder about how the telephone evolved over time and the influence it’s had on society. This generated rich discussion about change and how things evolve, so we decided to break into groups for further investigation. Some children were interested in how humans evolved and explored a timeline of the human skull and its changes. Others were interested in the continents, how they have changed, and whether or not they are still changing. Sharing our findings inspired an inquiry into natural selection which involved conducting several experiments to solidify our theories about the process involved.
The children have started their Personal Projects and are currently mapping their ideas, researching and designing a tangible piece. We are practising synthesising information and experimenting with different ways to record notes.
Our maths has mostly focused on data and representation to help convey information about the world. The children have used various tactile objects in the school grounds to gather data, be it the length of a leaf or the type and amount of objects found in a 1㎡ plot in the yard.
Afterwards we created data representations such as bar graphs, dot plots and line graphs to show our findings. These skills will support the children in their personal projects for the unit of inquiry as many of them are producing visual representations to convey the evolution of their given topic.
We are all looking forward to presenting our projects next week and reflecting on our Term.
Rosie Grimm & Oliver Breedon
10s & 11s Classroom Teachers