Science Week - THE HUMAN BODY! (Tuesday)

Today we began digging deep into our scientific information! 

We read a text about the brain - e.g.

Then we discussed the new words we learnt, and used the text to help us figure out what those words meant. This reinforces our decoding focus from the first two terms, and the comprehension focus for this term. 

Next, I recorded these 'new words' on the whiteboard but did not record their meaning. I didn't want to give students the answers.. more like, help them along, but then make them do the actual thinking/finding of information. 

Next, I modelled for students how to record my thinking in the template I had given them. A few students helped me co-construct this. 

Then, students went off and recorded their own thinking in their own words...

I loved that they started to put pictures in their presentations to help explain what they were talking about, I didn't model this, they just did it on their own! As students finished with their recording, we started reading about the next organ in small groups. This was about the stomach. We followed the same model - read, discuss, record new words, students independently record thinking in their own words. 

After lunch, the kids wanted to keep going, requesting 'can we do kidneys next?', 'can we do lungs?' which I thought was amazing! They already had learnt so much and were so eager to learn more. 

After lunch, we read about the heart. 

While we were learning about the heart, I showed the students (in small groups) what the heart looks like when it really beats.  

This is an app called Anatomy 4D which I downloaded onto my phone (which was shared with me by Paula Were, our schools literacy PD lady). The app allows you to scan the picture of a heart and it brings up an animation on your screen (in a similar style to Snapchat filters or Pokemon Go). It shows the different parts of the heart, and you can turn on/off different parts (that blue circle in the corner of the screen) to highlight a particular feature. 

These are some screenshots I took off my phone - I emphasised the blue and red arteries, which indicate which way the blood is flowing (into or out of the heart) which was something our reading taught us about. 

The students LOVED being able to really see it beat in real life (well, almost). Some of them even counted their pulse on their wrists (something I taught them to do yesterday) and said if their heartbeat was faster or slower than the one on the screen. Amazing! 

We had such RICH CONVERSATIONS about the three body parts we had learnt about, and made so many connections to the systems we talked about yesterday as well. It was an amazing day!

AND LOOK AT ALL THE WORDS WE LEARNT IN ONE DAY!

When Archana came in during lunch, the kids were almost fighting to explain to her what borborygmi was! 

It was an awesome second day of our human body unit. It is so encouraging to see all the students so engaged with their learning and so eager to share it and learn even more!