Learning & Teaching

Learning & Teaching/Wellbeing/Faith & Farm

First Encounters

Over this fortnight, our children and educators have begun work on our third Community Project. We have been investigating our concepts of force and/or process through different experiences.

The Prep Hub have followed children’s interests in paper planes and flying, as well as participating in a Billy Cart incursion. During these experiences, educators documented the children’s thinking.

Samson said: “If it’s being pushed it goes forward. If it’s being pulled it goes backwards.”

Kate Sophie said: “Simple machines mean you don’t need anyone to push you”.

Following our educator learning design time this week, prep educators have planned to relaunch some of the children’s thinking to investigate natural forces. This may include creating windchimes, boats, pinwheels, kites, windmills.

The One Hub investigated Rube Goldberg machines and marble runs during their First Encounter. The educators documented children’s thinking around the process of creating and experimenting with their creations.

The educators will now relaunch the following quote by Mateo, “Yeah but how do we make it drop?”. The children will respond to this through the language of mark making.

The children in our Two Hub were particularly interested in the forces involved in volcanic eruptions. Some of the children in the hub collaborated to make a volcano during Discovery and with the help of the educators, staged an ‘eruption’ for all the children to observe.

During learning design this week, educators considered quotes from the children to learn more about their thinking.

“It’s about the amount of pressure that they made. Pressure doesn’t always push you down, sometimes it pushes you up” - Arthur

“It expanded and maked it come out” - Dylan

Educators plan to relaunch these quotes about pressure through an exploration of the scientific process using different scientific situations and “experiments”.

The Three and Four Hubs explored gravity, friction, magnets and applied (push and pull) forces through hands-on experiences. They made contraptions to save an ‘egg’ from cracking when dropped from a great height, there were conversations about how parachutes work and what can slow down the effects of gravity. The children investigated the friction created by different surfaces when driven over by toy cars. They located objects within the learning spaces that have magnetic properties and created toys that used the forces of push and pull.

“This has the least amount of friction because it is going fast.” - Lola

“When I rolled the small ball magnet towards the second ball it caused it to spin. That was the force.” - Sunny

“You can be pushing or pulling when you apply force.”- Fionn and Marcus responded with: “Depends how much you apply.”- Marcus

The children will respond to the quote “It feels like something is there but there isn’t. It’s the force.” by Raff through the language of mark making.

The children in the Five/Six Hub explored the forces involved in aviation, for example lift and drag. They investigated the flight of boomerangs, paper aeroplanes and foam gliders, bringing all of this knowledge together they built their own engine planes. There are many discussions about how each plane flew differently and the possible alterations that could improve the flight paths.

Following our educator learning design time this week, five/six educators have planned to relaunch some of the children’s thinking to investigate how forces affect our lives through Winson's quote “What would happen if we never had force?”

Kind regards,

Lauren, Mairead and Amy

Learning Leaders