Tag: Inquiry

– DLO – Make It Work – Shoe Rack – The Five Musketeers

Task Description:

For this term, for our DLO we had to make something that would improve the environment around team five. Our team had five people, which were: Me, Eleni, Lynette, Swaimah, and Zaria. Our team started to plan our on paper what we thought we could make that could improve the area around team five. We wrote some ideas down and drew some designs on what possible things we could make. After we came up with the idea to make a shoe rack since the shoes outside of our class bay was so messy!

Before we started our “Make it work Project Research” we had to make a group name for ourselves, but none of us knew what would be a good name for us. I decided to just name us something I watched when I was younger and that was the five musketeers. We all agreed and got started on researching designs and materials for our shoe rack. We all did one slide each to efficiently finish and get started on our project though it was hard to find both materials and designs that didn’t cost much and wasn’t hard to design.

When we started our Make it work project, we also had started our inquiry diaries, What are those you ask? It’s in the name, more specific diary. So basically we wrote everyday we did inquiry into the diary and those would be our reflections of the day. We wrote what we did during the day, what we could improve on, what we learnt what we contributed to the group.

We had decided on our design on week 2 we decided that we wanted to do the same simple design that we had our bags in, in reference it looks like white wood and its smoothed with it looking like a cubbyholes (for our bags) we were the first group to get our wood, though we had gotten advice from one of the teachers that our design would be to much work for us and we wouldn’t have enough time to finish it.

We continued to work on a different and faster design and as we progressed we finished in week 6

We had one whole day of inquiry and I had so much to talk about in the diary, this is what I said,

Monday 6th of November 

Today there are four of us, me, Eleni, Zaria and Lynette. This Monday, our shoe rack has changed multiple times and now the shoe will be hanging out sort of from the shoe rack, we have measured how the shoe will fit and the exact fit of the shoe. We decided on the type of shoe rack we are doing and we are now waiting on one of the teachers when they are done to give us a tool to screw it in together. 

I helped with getting the wood and the small types of materials that we needed to get, just to measure the wood. Lynette helped with also getting the wood and measuring the wood as well with Zaria. We had to get one of the shoes from our cubbies where our bags go or the ones chucked on the ground and put it on our design to get the right measurements of our project. 

We started to drill in the screws into the wood so it could stay attached, we found this difficult because if we didn’t put enough pressure the wood rises from the bottom platform which leads us to reverse the drill to drill the screw in once again. 

Once we finished drilling in the screws we had our morning tea break and came back in, in the middle block we used this time wisely to start using the sandpaper to smooth out the edges of our shoe rack, and after that we took our shoe rack back inside to the street to start sketching on the wood, we had one wood plank each to do our different design.

 I can’t draw properly so I did some easy shapes, or designs, we had to stop there because then after lunch we had to pack up I think or just have time for our diaries to fill in our entries since we were building most of the day and not on our Chromebooks. 

Problems we had with this week were trying to find the exact measurements, trying to get the lines straight,drilling in the screws, trying to find designs we wanted to draw on the wood. 

From today I learnt that working together helps the project get done faster rather than doing it by yourself because working alone with only two hands makes the project get built slower. I also learnt that talking or discussing what we are working on gets us all on the same page rather than some of us getting confused about what we are doing. 

Our group had fun doing this as we have finished our project and just need to paint on it, as we may not have time to do it today.

In the end we did our reflections and we loved what we made, even when sometimes someone or some of the people in our group aren’t here during the days that we did inquiry. There was one day where we had our whole inquiry session cleaning up the paint we did outside. My highlight for this DLO was working as a team, and finishing the project to show at the end of our video, we also learnt some cool new things like drilling in screws and a lot more that you could find in the video, a low light I had from doing this DLO was having to find the exact measurements and material of wood to do our project. What I can take from this is that anything is possible if you put both your mind,effort and heart into it. Overall I enjoyed my last DLO of 2023, I won’t get to do something like this again for quite a while or probably at all. I loved that I got to enjoy every bit of the project along the way with the video. I hope you enjoy watching our last DLO for 2023!

Nutrients from Food

Task Description

For this task, we had to write the nutrients in many different things, and how it could effect you if you only ate that one thing everyday. After we had done this we had to pick an item of food that we liked to eat and find out the nutrients it contains. This was what I found out about mine. I hope you enjoy going through this!

Experiment Day 2

Task Description: Today for our first science project, we had to do a base vs acid. We saw in two different cups what baking soda would look like in water, and what baking powder would look like in another cup, Mrs Stone then added the base together with the acid and the baking powder didn’t go down and didn’t look the same as the other cup. I found this science project very fun to do with my team! I hope to do more like this in the future!

Experiment Day 1

Task Description: For this mornings task, our science session, we had done some experiments and  we had to answer the following questions about both physical and chemical changes. I found this quite exciting to do though it did need a lot of responsibility, we did the first science lesson which was based on cornstarch and a 1/2 cup of water, we didn’t know what was happening but as we did the procedure, we started finding both of these things hard to stir. We had to put a hand/finger into the bowl including both the water and cornstarch. It was both liquid and solid together, I found this very gross to touch at first and then I got very playful with it. When I pulled my fingers out of the bowl, I could see the cornstarch starting to dry up on my finger, I found it so weird and sticky. After we played with the cornstarch we had to wash our hands outside, I thought we had to really wash our hands thoroughly but then the cornstarch just slowly disappeared unless that was just my hands. In the end we managed to complete one of the two science projects. I hope you enjoy!

Matter 3

LI 3: We are learning to explain what happens to materials when they are heated and cooled. 

 

When particles are heated they: have more space between them and move more quickly.

 

When particles are cooled they: Decrease in space and move a lot slower then in heated water. 

 

What does this have to do with building houses?

 

When the particles have more energy they take up more space. This is why things expand or get bigger when they are heated and contract or get smaller when they get cold. When building, architects need to think about how much the materials may expand in the heat of the summer and contract in the cold winter months. Metal railway tracks have small gaps so that when the sun heats them, the tracks expand into these gaps and don’t buckle.

 

Why are there bumps or small gaps in the harbour bridge?

 

The harbour bridge has small gaps so that when the sun heats them, the tracks expand into these gaps and don’t buckle.

Chemical Or Physical Change?

Task Description:

Today for the last session of the day, we had to do our last inquiry task before we start getting into physical hands on science experiments. We had to match the chemical and physical reactions to each other. I thought about each one when I was doing this. I think I got most of them right! I hope you enjoy looking through these (maybe last)inquiry slides.

Atoms and Molecules – Inquiry

LI 5: We are learning that everything is made out of different combinations of atoms and that different materials have different properties.

Everything is made up of different combinations of these atoms. For example, water molecules are made up of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom. That is why water is also called H2O. 

What is the difference between a molecule and an atom?

Atoms are smaller than molecules and atoms are made up of one single particle, where as the molecules are made up with more than one atom

Site 

Atoms also come in different sizes, depending on how many electrons they have. An oxygen atom is a lot (16 x) larger than a hydrogen atom.  Draw a picture (and take a photo) or create an image on google draw of a water molecule H20. It contains 2 hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.

Example = this is a carbon dioxide atom.

Different materials have different properties. For example, they have different melting and boiling points, different mass (weight), density and some are stronger than others. This is caused by their molecular structure.

We need to keep this in mind when designing different products. For example, we make saucepans out of metal because they won’t melt on our stoves. However, if we tried to place a plastic pan on the stove it would melt because it has a lower melting point. We can create strong metal by creating a metal alloy (by combining one type of metal with another metal or element). These alloys can be stronger than the metal on its own.