The pupils working on our Enhanced Learning programme this week found out how exciting the ability to cross traditional curricular boundaries could be.
Whilst working on the Bug Hunt lesson that is included in the habitat part of our scientific curriculum, the children collected a host of “scientific data” - we recorded the number of beetles, woodlice, spiders, greenfly and millipedes we found in a specific area of the school’s Japanese Garden (see ELP Science Bug Hunt lesson for more details).
We had such a wonderful time in the garden collecting minibeasts in our nets, pooters and spy glasses. The opportunity to be “real” field scientists captured the imagination of the group. However, “real” scientists don’t simply do the experiment, have all the fun and then move on to the next exciting practical activity! The important part of science is often what we DO with the results or findings we uncover.
And this is the part where scientists often have to turn into mathematicians or computer whizzkids!
Our ELP pupils were asked what we could do with the information we had collected…and the answers we were offered were eye openers. Responses included:
* tell the janny (as he looks after the school)
* tell Mr Galbraith (as he runs the school)
* make a poster (to show people what we did)
* show Dr Voge
With a little prompting, however, they were able to suggest an activity that would require them to be both mathematicians and computer buffs.
* Why not put our numbers of bugs on a graph?
One S2 pupil then volunteered to get up and show us what she meant when she suggested we put the numbers in a BAR GRAPH. - and drew her own interpretation of what we might do on the whiteboard (very well indeed!)
We then looked for an example of the kind of thing we might do - one that “real” scientists might have produced. This is shown above. The idea that we could label the x axis with a pictorial key instead of names of insects appealed to the pupils - with varying literacy levels the pictures would allow every student to take part in the activity at their own level.
But when would we undertake this task? We had enjoyed our fieldwork so much time was at a premium - was there any other class or subject we could use our data to make the graphs?
“We could do it in maths!” was the resounding reply.
So the scientific data was transported to the maths classroom for use later on that day - bar charts would be the thrust of the day!
In maths we discussed how the graphs could be laid out and what tools we would need for the job. We also talked about how important it was for us to make sure our lines were straight, that we gave our graph a “name” (the posh word for this being “title”) and that we made sure we chose sensible numbers to go up the sides (this we learned was the “scale”).
In making our choices we decided -
* the scale must go up in regular spaces
* the numbers we choose should be “sensible” for the data
* the graph should try to fill the page
* our information should be easy for the reader to interpret - even if they don’t know all that
much about the subject
* we would try pictorial labelling on the bottom line (this is called the x axis) and test out how
well it works for other people
And here are the graphs that Steven and Dale produced…
But what of the ICT whizzkids?
Well, we also spoke as a group about how you can draw graphs in a very clever and modern way - using special computer programmes like Excel…and this allowed us to take the data handling into an ICT lesson. We would plot our data using Excel to create a bar graph that we could compare with our own hand drawn efforts!
You can find that graph here
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