The eager students impressed us this year with drawings of their School Yard Science animal (Sarah is Sloth and Johnnie is Jellyfish) on nametags. From Yellow Baboon to Quokka, the students are definitely creative!
Their school year starts with the International Baccalaureate theme of "Who am I?" We decided to be birds and answered the question what make a bird a bird. We dressed Johnnie Jellyfish as a bird – isn’t she cute!—recognizing features like hollow bones, feathers, beaks, etc.
We next explored different adaptations birds have and conducted some experimental inquiries into how different beak types might lend themselves to finding food in different habitats. We made a hypothesis and tested it outside in the school yard, using different beaks (tools like tongs and tweezers) to try to eat in different habitats (like deep pots of water or shallow pans). Sometimes we were right in our hypotheses and sometimes we were wrong – and we learned that sometimes you learn more from the times your hypothesis was wrong!
Originally published October 2018