Visit to the Wetlands

We had a fab visit to the Wetlands today. Debbie Eddington from ECAN, Conservationist Extaordinaire, met us down at the bridge and began by showing us pictures of some creatures who call the Wetlands home. Some are known to be pests and discouraged, and others are encouraged as valuable members of the Wetlands food web.
We saw lots of native plants, such as flax and toetoe. The flax had evidence of being eaten by native moths.
There were many areas we saw which have undergone huge improvement over the last year or so. Being so near to the rubbish tip, the plantings and windbreak along that side have made a big difference to the overall look of the Wetlands.
Since we have been studying inter-dependence, we were able to see much of it in action here.
We looked at Debbie's tracking boxes, which are clever little devices the students recognised and I didn't. The creatures walk through these little triangular prisms, walking through an ink pad at one end and then leaving their tracks for the DOC workers to find. We saw tracks made by lizards as well as other small creatures that could fit through the tubes.

Symbiosis (Interdependence 2)

Symbiosis is a way to describe a relationship between two organisms. It is classified differently according to whether the relationship benefits both or only one side.
Today we discussed the nature of symbiosis, its many types, and scrutinised one form of symbiosis which is lichen.
The existence of lichen is actually a result of a mutually beneficial relationship between an alga and fungus. We discussed this symbiosis and inspected some lichens under the microscope. Then the students went off to find more samples of lichen of their own.

The second picture shows lichen under a microscope much more powerful than ours.

Microscopes (Interdependence 1)

This afternoon we had heaps of fun with the school's three microscopes. They are relatively low power (10 and 20x) so it wasn't a case of seeing the bugs in water or the cells in onion layers... but very cool nonetheless.
We started by talking through the basic operation of the microscopes and how to handle them carefully. Then we looked at a few pre-assembled items such as some moss, Rosie's eyelash, a fingerprint and pencil shavings.
After we looked at the objects everyone had to go out and search for some more small things that we could inspect. This is where it got really interesting. Laurence and Aleks found a slug - you could even see his breathing hole opening and closing along his side. They also returned with a millipede which looked slimy to the naked eye, but under the microscope we could see that the shine comes from its hard exoskeleton. We found a dead fly on Mrs Lees' windowsill, and its eyes looked absolutely amazing under the lens. A green leaf that someone brought in was described by Ivan like emeralds. The surface wasn't smooth at all but sparkly and bumpy.
Here are some other ideas: https://www.microscopeworld.com/t-low_microscope_ideas.aspx

You can learn anything...

WALLS

I wanted to continue my work with the group about Walls today, but decided to ease off a bit on the philosophical viewpoint. For a summary of our previous session, which cause frustration on both sides, click here.

Today we started by reading together the Dr Seuss book The Butter Battle Book.

It's an entertaining book with wonderful illustrations and the usual Seuss patter. However, as with many Seuss classics, it also have a deeper message. This one is about the escalation of a disagreement between two groups of people, until the point where both are threatening to drop a bomb which will annihilate everyone and everything.

We discussed the deeper themes of the book, such as how the groups got into the dispute, and also whether it is an easy situation to resolve. We noticed that both groups feel very strongly about which side of the bread the butter should go on, and whether this is an important issue or not, their fervour in pursuing their point of view could not be denied.

It would be too simplistic to ask them to put aside their differences.

 

We didn't solve the bigger issues in the world today, but the discussion was interesting and varied. At the end of the session all the students wrote down a conversation between two people who held different views of a relatively unimportant issue. (Muffins or cupcakes? Apple or pc? Belt or no belt?



WALLS

An interesting topic for discussion this afternoon. We discussed the theme of WALLS - what they are for, why they are built, where they are built, and any famous walls we can think of. We watched a short video about Hadrian's Wall in the north of Great Britain, and discussed some other walls which we know of, such as the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China.

In the course of our discussion, we became quite bogged down. I think it was mainly disbelief that brought us to a rather frustrating halt. Having lived all their lives in a very peaceful country, many of the students struggled to understand how and why the Berlin Wall was so effective for so long, and the dreadful stories of cruelty, suffering and death that came from that time.

It caused me to wonder to myself about peace. Peace is a marvellous thing, but does it mean that our children will always struggle to relate in any way to countries that do not have it? I wondered if I was making too many assumptions about the kind of work which the group (advanced as they are) can cope with. I concluded that they are simply too young, and that empathy will come with maturity.

For more information about the Berlin Wall, click on these links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Wall
http://history1900s.about.com/od/coldwa1/a/berlinwall.htm

Exploring the World...

Today we started our session with a think about Music Composers, Artists and Creative Writers. We thought about what it is that they do, and what they have in common. We decided that they all create - they make something new. They have their own ways of interpreting their world, and putting it out there in terms of music, art or stories. Aleks used the word "processing". We acknowledged that to put your work out there for all the critique takes courage, and that many adults are far too worried about what others might say in order to create. Young people are far more willing to take risks in this way.
We finished the session by creating some artwork using a merged background - no palette, just blobs of paint straight onto the card - and then painting a foreground ontop. For inspiration we watched the Khan Academy short video on Dynamism of a Soccer Player, which you can see again by clicking here.
Even though there were "no right or wrongs", it still took courage to have a go.