Dover K1ReJ blog 2015-2016: Week 8 Term 3

House Keeping

Congratulations to Artemis for receiving Kaz this Wednesday for showing a commitment to care with her friends in the playground this week. Congratulations also to James for showing a commitment to care and trying hard to make good choices throughout your day.
In your child's blue folder this Friday you would have received a note regarding our K1 year farewell party at school. Please read the note, as it has details of a small snack we'd like your child to contribute. Please do not return the note to school it is for your own reference.
Please inform school and myself if you are planning on leaving on holiday early.
If anyone has photos of coral reefs (The Great Barrier Reef) please feel free to email them to me this weekend/Monday.
Here's the link to our Arts Festival Video. Enjoy!

Diving in to Inquiry This Week

Now that Arts Festival is over, we've been able to spend more time focussed back on our inquiry. Last week we read a book called 'One Cool Friend', in which The Great Barrier Reef was mentioned. Many of our children hadn't heard of The Great Barrier Reef and asked to know more about it. Then later in the week Liam said he wanted to find out more about creatures in the water. This week we've been taking a closer look at the wonders of coral reefs.

First we watched a documentary about the wonderful creatures in The Great Barrier Reef. There were some beautiful reactions as the children watched on and drew what they found interesting in their Investigation Journals. Artemis said, "Oh! It's so beautiful!"

Have a look at the great reaction on Maya in the top left corner of this photo!

Then with Wilbur's Mum, Alice, (Thank you Alice for coming in and the photos). A few children used their journals and imaginations to create 3D models of something they saw from the morning. These children presented what they had made to their class with confidence.

Describing his fish.

Showing her coral to her friends.

As a class we then decided to become scientists to take a closer look at the reef. We used a Y - Chart to help narrow down our investigations in to three parts. What does a reef: Look like, Sound like and Feel like. First we re-visited our understanding of what made something living: It's breaths, grows and eats. Then after looking at some non- fiction books and comparing a rock to a piece of coral we discovered that coral is an animal! We also discovered just like animals, coral comes in many different shapes and sizes.

Filling out the 'It looks like' section of the Y-Chart

While the children were drawing, here are some of the conversations that were happening:

Artemis "It looks like there's so many corals. Some look like houses and some look like tunnels."

Natalia "The coral look likes crunchy orange things."

Livio "I look on the book and it has a rectangle at the bottom and at the top it had lots of lines."

Lucas "Do you know water has to begin it. We (Takuma and him) saw some rocks. The water goes up and down, up and down."

Misha "It's like a busy town you know cause there's lots of fishes."

Takuma "I went to the ocean and saw some rocks."

The next day the children were issued with a construction challenge. Each mat in the classroom had on it a big white A3 planning sheet and marker. It also had different types of construction materials and a non-fiction book about reefs. The children decided amongst themselves, which type of construction material they were most interested working with and went to that mat.

Their challenge was to...

Use their Critical Thinking Skills to plan what their reef would look like, using the non-fiction books to help them.
Their Communication Skills to share and listen to the ideas in their group.
Their Collaboration skills and Commitment to Care to take turns to contribute to the construction of their reef.
Their Creativity to make their reef unique, like no others in the class.

Below are some photos from the process...

We then worked on the next part of our Y-Chart: What does the reef feel like? Small groups of children felt our very simple reef recreation and described what they could feel.

Zara "Eww! Slimy Sand!"

Isabella "It feels rough and playful."

Mya Jade "The coral feels very rough."

Lily "It feels hard."

James "It feels juggy."

"Feels smooth and a little bit rough."

"It's kind of bumpy."

Throughout the week to support the children's thinking around all things in the ocean I had been reading ocean related picture books to them. They were invited to make a story plan (storyboard) inspired by the stories read that week or their own imagination. These stories will hopefully be made into Puppet Pal stories they will share with their K2 friends next week, when we visit a K2 class to learn about the animals the K2s have been inquiring about.

Mia wrote a story about Mermaids and their parties. Finn used his life experience to write about a shark that was nervous about school, but then loved it because he found a construction mat and was very happy. Zara wrote a story inspired by the book 'Mister Seahorse'.

We ended our week by exploring our last section in the Y-Chart. What does a coral reef sound like? The children sat in a circle listening to a piece of ocean sounds and described what they could hear.

Kaia and Mia "I heard some dolphins splashing."

Maya "It's like water swaying."

Livio "It sounds like it splashing on the beach."

Artemis "It sounds like whales are splashing."

Later that day a group of interested children used some musical instruments to make some oceans sounds of their own.

Next Week...

The children will get to explore what is happening to our Reefs. The children will see how the reef connects to their world. We will welcome a guest who has worked for environmental organisations who will tell us about what happening and what others are doing about it. We will invite children to come up with their own ideas and thoughts about what they can do to play a part.

We may express what we know by constructing our own reef using clay and collage materials.

We're visiting K2 to learn more about what they have learnt and hopefully share our stories with them too.