weekly letter week 11

Last week was a shortened one with developmental talks on the Wednesday. Even though we only had four days we manged to squeeze a lot of work into them. The Friday before we handed up our projects for the Year 5 Exhibition and our advertising and marking campaigns as well. Last we we put posters around the school, gave out flyers to classes to get information about the Exhibition to the school community and our ad campaigns were put up on the wall outside the classroom.

One of the big things that happened at the start of the week was that we started our new Inquiry unit. In this unit we will focus on the what and how our body needs for us to move and stay alive as well as function. We plan to develop a good understanding of what our body needs to function (food, water, air) and how does it function when we need to do physical tasks.

The unit was introduced with a surprise game of blind football. This was to get the students to start to think about what they are doing by turning a familiar activity like football and putting it in an unfamiliar setting - not being able to see! The game was a hit and they all learnt a few things about themselves and their bodies even before I started asking them questions ("I had to use my ears to see"). We followed up our game later in the week with the challenge of putting together a jumble of bones into a human skeleton. This had the effect of people feeling their ribs and trying to figure out if they had one or two bones in their forearms. We now plan to progress from the skeleton and work to muscles and how the two systems work together so we can move.

I have been talking to Peter about us going on a hike (behind the hospital) later in the unit so we are able to put our new knowledge and understanding of the human body into practice. Questions and statements that the students should be able to answer by this time would be things like What do I do to stop my body feeling so tired? By eating this food this will help me do......by giving me.....

How the world works

central idea

The Human Body is a complex and versatile system.

Key concepts: Function, Causation

Related concepts: Systems

What lines of inquiry will define the scope of the inquiry into the central idea?

·         How our bodies function

·         What our bodies need to stay fit and healthy

·         How our body systems differ from other species

The developmental talks on Wednesday went very well and many of the students were proud to show

their parents the work they have achieved so far this year. I think some students not only surprised their

parents but themselves as well with just how much work they have done in class this year.

So that was our week in school :)

sorry for the strange formatting at the bottom of the page :/