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.