Rocket Writing

I know these things about New Zealand...that when you go to Queenstown you have to drive along side the lake. I know that the Prime minister of New Zealand is Helen Clark. I know that the Governmet is in Wellington and that Wellington is the Capital City of New Zealand.

By Stacey

Rocket Writing

I know these things about Invercargill...I know that the water tower holds our water and that you can go up to the top of it. I know that the Tuatara were found by scientists from New Zealand.

By Jack

What is important to me about New Zealand

We each had a lump of Play-Dough. We each had to make something that was important to us about New Zealand, like water, the Kiwi, houses and people. I made a church and Jared made water (a lake).

By Mahnoor & Jared

Place Mats

These are the questions for our place mats about New Zealand...What does each picture make you wonder? If your were in this picture how would you feel? What do you know about this picture? and Who would be here and what would they be doing? My favourite place mat was the picture of Mount Cook because it is big, white and covered in snow.

By Xanthe & Liam

Tuning In 'The National Anthem'

We listened to the National Anthem and said every thing we knew about it. We know that the All Blacks sing it before a big match and that it is sung at lots of other sporting events. The first verse is sang in Maori then the second one in English with a Haka in the middle. When we listened to the National Anthem we felt proud to be a Kiwi.

By Bradley & Jessica

Taking Action

The students decided that a simple way to take action for this inquiry, was to stop our families from spraying for bugs in the home. They chose to make fridge magnets as a reminder of why we need bugs.

The students came up with a list of reasons not to spray bugs, and each chose one to put on their magnets.

Making Conclusions

To make conclusions from this inquiry, we did two things.

First we Layed it on the Line. We had to decide if we agreed or disagreed with Miss Findlays statements, and explain why we thought this.

We also did "Putting me in the picture". The children had to draw a picture to show how the things we have learnt in our inquiry (like how we affect a bugs life, and what jobs bugs do), will affect their lives now.

Going Further presentations

We presented these to the class, with our Kidspiration work on the Interactive Whiteboard. We video recorded our presentations using our webcam so that we can refer back to them at a later date!

(unfortunately Grace's Life cycle wouldn't copy from Kidspiration)

BEE'S
Bees eat nectar, pollen and sap. Sometimes we cut down trees and if a bee's home is in that tree on a bruch we are also cutting down their house. They like to live in hot places and in trees.

By Grace

Going Further

For our Going Further projects, some of us are working by ourselves, and others are working in pairs.

We have to choose a bug that we want to out more about, and research the following things:

What is the life cycle of the bug? How long does it spend at each stage?

What does the bug eat?

Where does the bug need to live, to survive?

How do we effect that bug?

To find out some of this information, we went on a trip to the museum. We talked to Mr Lindsay Hazley about all of our bugs.

While we were there we got to play with live Locusts! They moved very fast!

We are also looking in bug books, and on the internet to find out our information.

When we have found out everything that we need to know, we are presenting the information on Kidspiration... Stay tuned to see how we get on!

Survey

For our final finding out activity, we wrote a survey to find out how many of our families use bug sprays, and how dangerous are those sprays?

These are the questions we asked:

Do you spray for bugs in your house?

If yes, why do you spray for bugs?

Do you know what is in the sprays that you use?

Will the spray that you use kill ALL bugs?

Are the sprays you use poisonous?

Could the sprays hurt us as well?

Does the person who sprays use protective clothing?

Once our surveys had been returned, we then had to sort them out. To do this, we were put into groups, with one survey question per group. With the answers to our question, we had to make a pictogram to display on the wall. We had to learn how to make a tally chart and a pictogram in order to complete this task!

Instead of drawing pictures for our graphs, we got creative and took photos of us doing a freeze frame to represent the answers given.

Bug sprays with Mr Dudfield

On Friday Mr Keith Dudfield from Invercargill Parks and Reserves came to talk to us about bug sprays. He told us lots of handy information about how to get rid of bugs! Some things were:


To get rid of white fly, coat a piece of cardboard in cooking oil, and hang in the glasshouse. The flies are attracted to it, and stick to it!


To get rid of earwigs from inside your flowers, fill a spoon with methylated spirits, light on fire and waft around the flowers. The earwigs shoot out of the flowers because they dont like the fumes!


If is important to wear protective gear when working with chemical sprays (gumboots, plastic trousers and coat, face mask, goggles, gloves) because if the sprays get onto your skin, or into your system (like in your eyes) they can make us very sick.


There are organic sprays that we can make to kill bugs! These are made of garlic and vinigar.

To sort out this information, we did a pass the ball, to talk about all of the information we could remember. We were then put into pairs, and were given a situation to role play. The situation was:

You work in a plant shop, but you have discovered that there are lots of bugs in your plants. What are you going to do about it?

This gave the students the opportunity to share all of the information they knew about how to get rid of bugs!

Wonderings!

Answers to some of our wonderings!

What types of bugs are there?

Insecta (insects), arachnids (spiders), molluscs (slugs and snails)

What do bugs do?

They make honey

They recycle - maggots eat dead sheep and turn it into soil again

They pollinate flowers to give us fruit

They can look pretty

Do we need to care about the bugs?

Yes we do, because if we didnt we wouldnt have fruit or honey. We wouldnt have any fantails or lizards or trout, frogs.

Fun activities!

We went on a bug hunt! We went for a walk down to the reserve with Mrs Wheeler, armed with ice cream containers and a special bug container.

We split up into 2 groups, Mrs Wheeler took the boys, and Miss Findlay took the girls. We hunted in bushes, long grass, dug in the dirt and all sorts! We found a few small spiders, a couple of centipedes, and a couple of larger spiders!

We had a great time!

We also watched some sections of a DVD by Ruud Steinpaste (The Bug Man!!!)

We watched sections about Goliath spiders (a type of tarantula), Black Widow spiders, Funnel web spiders and Killer bees!

It was very interesting, and a little scary in some spots!

Mr Eslers visit!

On Monday Mr Esler came to talk to us about what sort of bugs there are, and what bugs do. We sorted out this information by putting it into a Told Us, Made Us Wonder chart:

Mr Esler told us:

If there were no bugs there would be no frogs, fantails, fruit, trout, lizards.

He explained a huhu beetles life cycle.
=egg, grub, pupae, beetle.

The huhu beetle lives for 1 week.

Butterflies and moths are different because they have different patterns on them.

Huhu beetles have no mouths and no digestive system


Moths have soft antennae.

The bees and flies we see are girls. The boy bees are called drones.

Silk come from silk spiders.

Insects help pollenate fruit plants.

Insects help us to recycle - maggots eat dead sheep and turn it into soil. Worms do this too!

Bees make honey!

We are now wondering:

How can we care about the bugs more? Jordyn

Why do wasps not die after stinging? Jessica

Finding Out

For our first finding out activity, in groups we looked at pictures of spiders and insects, and talked about their body parts.

We noticed that Spiders have 8 legs, 2 body parts called the abdomen and head thorax. We learnt that the scientific name for a spider is Arachnid. A spider has an exoskeleton, which means his skeleton is on the outside of his body.

We noticed that insects have 6 legs, 3 body parts called the head, thorax and abdomen. They belong to the Insecta family.

We found out that snails and slugs belong to the Mollusc family.

To sort out what we found out, we have drawn diagrams of spiders and insects into our books, labelling the correct parts.

Wondering wall

Now that we have tuned in to our big question "Are bugs important?", we needed to think about what we want to know now.

We discussed the things that we are wondering, with Miss Findlay and Mrs Allen.

We are wondering:

What types of bugs are there? - Jordyn

What do bugs do? - Grace

What do bugs do to survive? - Jessica

What plants keep bugs living? - Grace

Why don't we care about the bugs? - Grace

Do we need to care about the bugs? - Bradley

What are the supermarkets going to do if there are no bugs? - Grace

Who can we see about caring for bugs? - Jordyn

What is in the sprays that kills bugs? - Bradley

Could the sprays kill us? - Maddie

After we thought about our wonderings, we needed to figure out how we could find the answers. We made a list of places we could go to find out more:

• Books
• Computer - Internet
• Museum
• Study bugs go to a bee keeper, go to the reserve, school grounds
• Ask someone who knows about bugs: Mr Esler, a bee keeper, the worm man

Mystery box

Our final tuning in activity was mystery box. Miss Findlay had a box with something inside it, and we had to ask her YES or NO questions, to try and figure out what was inside the box.

Through our questioning, we found out that it was a bug, then more specifically a beetle. We found out it was brown, it did not have 4 legs, and it did not have 8 legs.

On our final question, Jake got the answer correct! He guessed that in the box was a Huhu beetle!

We then passed the beetle around, having a closer look.

Playdough creations!

For todays tuning in activity, we had to create something using playdough to show what we know about bugs. It was really fun!

"When you make stuff it's really fun!" Jessica thought.

"We could make all kinds of bugs" said Tom.

More Tuning In

Startling Statements



In our table groups (4), we had to decide if the statements that Miss Findlay put on the board were true or false.



The statements were:



Bugs have 12 legs T=1 F=3

"Catapillars might have 12 legs" said Tom



Bugs can fly T=0 F=4

"Some bugs can fly" said Liam



Spiders are bugs T=2 F=2

"Spiders are bugs because they crawl" Jordyn thought



All bugs have a job to do T=1 F=3

"Spiders bite people" thought Jake



Bugs have 3 body parts T=2 F=3 (one group couldn't decide!)

"Spiders have 3 parts. Head, Stomach and legs" thought Stacey



Bugs are always black T=0 F=4

"Ladybugs have some black on them" said Tom



Worms are bugs T=1 F=4 (one group couldn't decide!)

"Worms don't have legs, bugs have legs" said Grace



Bugs have tails T=1 F=4 (one group couldn't decide!)

"Butterflies have tails so it is true" thought Matt

Tuning In

Room 2 thinks "tuning in" is:

Thinking about our big question, and finding out what we already know about it.

Our first "tuning in" activity was to sort a selection of pictures into groups.

It was up to the students, how many groups, and what each group meant.

Here are some of our groupings:

Jack sorted his into "interesting" and "not interesting".

Braeden sorted his into "things that have legs" and "things that do not have legs".

Ben sorted his into "things that are scary" and "things that are not scary".

Room 2

Welcome to Room 2's term one Inquiry blog!

Our big question this term is:

ARE BUGS IMPORTANT?

Stay tuned to find out more!