Session 5 Joseph Banks Year 8 Science - Tom and Amanda

Tom had a last-minute PL on Wednesday so we needed to move our session to last thing Friday which we know isn’t the best time for getting this class’s attention! With this in mind we made it very hands on, starting with getting to know their pet rocks for this rocks and minerals topic - asked them to choose their rock then ‘meditate’, contemplating their rock for a couple of minutes, before they could get Sharpies to decide how to personalise and name their rocks. Some gorgeous outcomes, and everyone engaged.

Tried to fit in two parts here (I know it was Friday and in hindsight this would never work). Ideally, we would have some of the students working with our airdry clay making pebbles we can use for future reflections - in creative habit colours - while others worked on video questions. We managed to get the pebbles created (more or less!), but only some groups started to decide what questions they would record. We have recruited a few FIFO workers via TikTok who are happy to respond (privately not on Tiktok) to students’ video-recorded questions on FIFO, so next session we will continue to get these recorded and then plan how we’ll incorporate other “must knows” students have into our final project outcome.

Tom led this with the Creative Habits wheel on the board, students are getting the hang of this (except for “disciplined”, always tricky as they make assumptions!). He’s got the pins/arrows ready for individual wheels for next time too.

Today’s planning was still too ambitious for a Friday afternoon, last lesson session, so we have half of it ready to continue next week, when we’ll have students record their questions (I’ll bring their brainstormed questions from last week).

They really enjoy anything that’s hands on, but I think some (not all!) are also intrigued by being able to ask real people some of their FIFO questions. They enjoy Creative Schools sessions, so that’s something!

Hopefully we can, once we have the video answers, get the students to consider how we can present this information as a class, and what else we need to add to give us a full picture of FIFO life.

Since we have some extra time I’ll contact a few more FIFO content creators.

Will bring student brainstorms next week to get them to choose their questions more easily.

Pebbles are drying at school, will bring a good jar for us to use to show both creative habits and sedimentary layers!