Session 9 - Somerly Primary School Year 3 - Health and Technologies

PASS THE CLAP - Working as a whole class

1. Get into a large circle

2. One person is going to start by clapping towards the person next to them

3. This person must receive the clap and pass it to the next person

4. The challenge is how well we can work together to pass the clap around the whole circle

5. Shall we time it? What is our goal?

What do we know?

1. You will be given a word. Remember the word (to be placed into smaller groups) - animal, water, plant, rock, place, monument

2. Fold your piece of paper into four

3. In your groups, your challenge is to draw/name as many things that you can that relates to your word - eg: place can be a town, city, destination

4. Put one in each rectangle - 10 minutes

5. We are going to move to a new group in a clockwise direction

6. Fold a new piece of paper. How many new things can you come up with to add to the list started by the previous group (animal group moves to water group and adds to their topic)

7. Continue to rotate until each group has had a turn at each station

Crunch and Sip

Read ‘Our Country, Where History Happened’ by Mark Greenwood and Frane Lessac

Ongoing Reflection

1. In each activity, which creative habit do we need to use?

2. Using your imagination and our activities today, how could/would you like to learn more about Geography and Australia?

Successes

• The new student who has moved into the class was comfortable enough to participate straight away in the warm up even though he came in late

• The students were able to explain to the three students who joined late, how to play ‘Pass the Clap’

• They were able to improve their technique each time and improved their timing

• Reading of the book during Crunch and Sip promoted conversation on Australia and made them realise that they knew more than they thought they did during the Main Activity

• We went way over time because they were all interested in the book even though it was non-fiction

Challenges

• Ability to fully understand the activity - meanings of rocks (mountains, mountain ranges), water (specific bodies of water), monuments/attractions and places (they didn’t initially relate these to locations they may have been on holidays 

• More unsettled during the Main Activity however this may have been because it was something new, there has been a long break in between sessions and it went for quite a long time even with them moving between stations

• Groups were working independently rather than collaboratively

Less focus on collaboration in the Main Activity even though they collaborated well in the warm up. There was some confusion as to where you could find rocks or mountains apart from Uluru (one student drew a picture of a front garden), places (someone put Bunnings and Aldi) and water (there were a couple of fish tank drawings). In general, they were only able to make limited connections between what they knew and what we were asking them. This may be because when we provided an example, it was an overseas example rather than an Australian one. It did however, provide us with a starting point and a further understanding of what they already know and where we can go from here. They (particularly the boys) were interested in the formation of the different landforms around Australia and how old they were.