eLearning and Inquiry in a Junior Class

learning@school

Shaping teaching and learning in the 21st century Ko te whenu hou te tau

learning@schoolRotorua New Zealand February 2008

Helen Rennie-Younger Northcote Primary school

Fiona Grant Central North Shore ICT PD cluster

elearning and Inquiry Learning in a Junior Classroom

Room Three

Year 0/1

2006 School wide theme:Treasures

Kiwi foreverCreating a treasure

Pounamu

Our grandparents

2007 School wide theme:Windows

Rain on the windowWater goes around

Colour

‘Cool schools’

The Tangata Whenua

Room Three Digital diary

2006

‘The Kiwi’

Tuning In

What do you know ?What questions do you have ?How could you find information out?

We shared allthe things weknew aboutthe kiwi

We sorted allthe facts weknew into a Ychart

Why dothey have

little wings?

What do theyeat ?

Why do theylook for food

at night time ?

How big arekiwi eggs ?

Why do Kiwishave such

long beaks ?

Where dothey live ?

We had some question’s

To find answersto our questionswe decided weneeded to

Look in books

Ask ‘experts’

Look on the internetGo to the museum orthe zoo

How bigare kiwieggs ?

We decided to find answers to some of our questions

We used this tocompared thesize of the kiwiegg with things inour classroom

We found abook thatshowed us theactual size ofa kiwi egg.

Shea found thatthe egg was thesize of his hand.

Taiga found thatthe egg was thesame size as apiece of mobilo.

We comparedthe kiwi eggto a hen’s egg.

A Kiwi’s egg is 6 times bigger than a hen’s

egg.

Shea thought it would be agood idea to show the size ofthe kiwi’s egg with play dough.

Wow !

We looked on the

internet and

watched a video of

an kiwi hatching

from its egg.It was

so interesting we

watched it twice!!!!!.

We decided to present whatwe’d learnt about the size of akiwi’s egg on our classroom wall.

We decided to answer another question

Wheredo Kiwi’s

live ?

To find the answer toour question wewatched a video and ……..

… looked at books

We found out that…………….

Kiwi’s live onthe forest

floor

Kiwi’s live inNew Zealand

Kiwi’s livein theforest.

Where theylive is calledtheir habitat

burrowLeaf litter

Kiwi

egg

We made a display of the kiwi’s habitat in our classroom

We also made a class Y chart which answeredsome of the other questions we had about the Kiwi eg what they ate and why they had a long beak

Finding out

What would you like to learnmore about ?Do you have any new questions?

We found out the kiwi was endangered and we wanted to know why ?

http://www.kcc.org.nz/birds/kiwi.asp

Sorting out

What have you learnt ?How will you record thisinformation ?

We found out that the kiwi is killed by ……

We passed the Kiwi around andshared how we felt …

mad

angry

sadcross

I feel angrywhen possum

traps are on theforest floor

I feel sadbecause the kiwiis getting killed

I feel angry whenpeople take their

dogs into theforest

I feel angrybecause the kiwiwill be gone for

good

Going Further

What would you like to learnmore about?Why ?

We looked at an Interactive bookon the Kiwi Recovery website about 006 the kiwi chick……

……and found outthat people arehelping the kiwi.

http://www.savethekiwi.org.nz/KiwiClassroom/SniffsStories/nesteggmiracle.htm

To show how ‘006’ was helped by people whocare about kiwis we organised all the photos we had of ‘006 ’

We put them in order from when the egg wastaken from the bush

to the Bird Recovery

Centre……

where ithatched and‘006’ the chickwas lookedafter to…….

when ‘006’ was released onLimestone Islanda kiwi reserve

We looked at someother photos of people helping the Kiwi.

We wrote about whatwe saw in the photos

To help the kiwi atransmitter is puton the leg to trackthe kiwi in theforest.

They look at the egg with a torch to see ifit is growing

They take the egg.

To fix the egg they put nail polish on it.This keeps the germs out of the egg.

When we ran the school assembly weshared some of the things we had learntabout the kiwi and the ways people arehelping to save them.

We sent Perky the pukeko our NorthcotePrimary ambassador on a virtual field tripwith Audrie the learnz teacher.

PerkyAudrie

We all got to cuddle himbefore he went on histrip.

Every day for a week we met withrooms 1 and 2 to look at the picturesand videos of Perky’s trip with Audrie

We saw how theymarked a trail to itso they could findit when it was dark

We watched themfind Jack a malekiwi and his burrow

We watched them goback at night timeand lift Jacks eggsfrom his burrow

They wrapped theegg very carefullyand put it in a boxwith a hot waterbottle

We also got to see inside Jack’s burrowit was full of dry leaves and feathers.

The next day we saw a video of Audrietaking Jacks eggs to the RainbowSprings hatchery in Rotorua where theycandled each egg and found only one ofthe eggs was viable.

They took the photo of this kiwi thathad hatched in the morning.

The next day they went to Warrenheipreserve, which is surrounded by a pestproof fence. The rangers caught ayoung kiwi called Cassidy for a healthcheck.

They showed us where Cassidy’sear opening is just behind her eyeThey measured her bill andweighed her.

Then they changed Cassidy’stransmitter to her other leg.

We really enjoyed watching the videosso we watched them again in ourclassroom.

Throughout the week we receivedemails and photos of Perky and we……..

sent him emails to tell him how much weenjoyed getting the daily photos andvideos.

Reflection

What is the most significant

interesting thing you have

learnt?

We decided that oneway we could help the Kiwi was by raising somemoney for the Bank of New Zealand operationNest Egg programme so…

we drew beautiful pictures

to sell

Action

What have you learnt that youcan use in your everyday life ?How can you apply thisknowledge in every day life

Every class inthe Kowhai teamput their art workin the hall to sell

Room 2 Room 7

Room 1 Room 3

Room 5

Room 10

Room 6

We raised over $350 and presented it to representativesof the BNZ kiwi recovery trust.

Perky returned toschool on the lastday of the term. We were pleased to see him back.

We look forward to sending him off onanother adventurenext year!

The end

Digital diary using a blog

http://northcote3.blogspot.com

Lyn Kriegler