Richard's Animal Habitat Digitise It Learning Story - August 2015

Learner: Richard                                                                          Learning Coach: DWilkes       Date: August 2015                                                                       Learning Area:  Science

Learning Observed

This term the LH1 learners have been learning about animals, adaptations and habitats. Richard has been building his language and developing his understandings of the many ways the natural world can be represented.  Richard is able to recognise that living things are suited to their particular habitat and can discuss the adaptations of specific animals.  He used his curiosity and creativity to create adaptations for his imaginary animal the BEAST.  Richard recognises that all living things have certain requirements so they can stay alive and could identify these for his creature.  Richard was fortunate enough to go on a field trip to the zoo where many animals captured this curiosity.  He used the learning from the zoo trip to create his creature using the www.buildyourwildself.com wesbite.  He needed to create a habitat that would be suitable for his creature.  He opted for the ‘Digitize It’ option knowing that he wanted to design the creature habitat in Minecraft and demonstrate his capability at using it.  He went through a rigorous design process that involved connecting with information through researching to create a fact file on the Beast, drawing a draft diagram of what the habitat would look like and then creating it in a digital tool of his choosing.  Richard collaborated well- listening to other learners and asking questions.  His Minecraft was a good representation of what he initially planned with some modifications.  Ask him to show it to you!  When it was time to share their learning, Richard presented his habitat with some confidence to the Learning Coaches and learners in LH1.  You can see his assessment here.

Evidence of learning

Next Learning Steps

write a reflective blog post about the learning and share with parents create a product of their learning eg. iMovie to show the habitat in minecraft create a more detailed diagram with labels that is represented in the final product practice presenting so you are prepared- why don’t you present to your family?!

Richard's Food Chain Learning Story

Learners: Christian, Sadeen, Samantha, Richard, Divya, Shreya     Learning Coach: T.Dillner           Date: 22.7.15

Learning Area: iExperience - Science (Food Chain)

Learning Observed

At the moment, the learners in LH1 are looking at Animals and their various features. Today’s session was looking at the Food Chains that are formed by NZ plants and animals - both native and pests. The learners had to examine a set of animal pictures and come up with a system of organising them according to who would eat what. They had to transfer the name of the animal to a strip of paper and connect them to the animal/tree that would eat them, eventually forming a chain. Christian, Sadeen, Samantha, Richard, Divya and Shreya worked collaboratively to strategise a way of organisation. They assigned each animal a strip and laid the photo on the top. When they had established the bottom of the food chain (invertebrates), they matched up the rest. When a tree/animal had been incorporated, they removed the photo to eliminate it from those that remained. Their final food chain was showing the relationship between invertebrates at the bottom of the food chain to feral cats at the top.

Evidence of learning

Working together to create a method to classify the animals in the food chain.

Key Competencies/Vision Principles

Collaboration was the main focus of this task. The learners in this group worked well for a majority of the time they were given. They did work together to figure out how to group the animals, and mostly worked together to create the chain. There was some stress at the end to get it finished on time though. (Participating & Contributing and Managing Self). To complete the links in the chain, the group had to work out the connections between the animals by thinking about their needs, physical size/shape, and diets (Thinking).Their chain showed some of these connections as it was not completely straight, it had extra links added in on the sides.

Next Learning Steps

Continue to independently focus on collaborative behaviour: How do we speak to one another? How do we make sure everyone has a turn? How can we involve people who could contribute more? Find reading material/research that could inform them of different food chains e.g. marine food chains.