The Peppercorns 10s & 11s
Interesting Investigations
The Peppercorns are up to all sorts of interesting investigations, including starting our personal inquiry project!
After an initial brainstorm, the children created a mind map to record their passions and interests. They used their mind map as a graphical way to represent ideas and visually structure information in order to better analyse, synthesise and recall their thinking. Then came the hard part… deciding on a passion/interest to delve into more deeply. Once the decision was made, the children drafted a proposal for their project, which included: a working title, an aim, rationale, goals and ideas for a tangible piece/artefact. This week we got down to the ‘nitty-gritty’ and have started researching, designing and creating a tangible piece/artefact. We are all excited to follow each others’ learning journey and to support each other with ideas and feedback.
We’ve been having lots of fun with spelling! This week, we focused on homophones and after agreeing on a definition, created a list together. The children used the homophone spelling list to create activities and games to share with their families. Some of which included: word searches, chatterboxes, tic-tac-toe and code breaking.
The gummy bear experiment generated lots of discussion around results and variables. After our initial group experiment, the children developed a personal research question and hypothesis to test. Next week, we will be sharing our results and can’t wait!
It was great to share the average heights in our families after the Peppercorns persisted with measuring each member, recording data and using the formula for averages to work it out! Don’t worry pets were included!
These are just a few things that the Peppercorns have been sinking our teeth into over the last 3 weeks. There’s been so much sharing of learning and a willingness to support each other and take on feedback, just as always. It’s a credit to our incredible Peppercorn children and families - "thank you"!
Sometimes during our group sessions we reflect on a question of the day. So we will leave you with this:
Would you rather live in a place with a lot of trees or live in a place near the ocean?
Rosie Grimm & Victor Toufas
10s & 11s Classroom Teachers