INQUIRY – EGGS!

Prior knowledge…What do we know about eggs?

Ignition!

• Question: What’s in an egg?

• Observation: hands on, touching, looking, thinking and talking

• Action: Students drew and labelled contents of an egg

• More questions: I wonder why…

Analysis

The farm comes to the class

• Hands-on experience

Knowledge upload!

What does a chick need to be healthy, happy and safe?

Beyond the basics…….

The Big Day (3/9/08)

Transformation…..

Wow! Look at our babies…

Key Competency – Using Language, Symbols and Texts

KEY COMPETENCY• Using language, symbols, and texts• This competency enables students to communicate

information, experiences and ideas. The context for this Inquiry and this Key Competency has been ‘eggs’.

• Students have learned the following skills:• * Explain their thinking using• photos and diagrams• * Draw a diagram• * Label a diagram• * Use headings• * Record a fact linked to a• headingOur children will continue to develop these skills and apply

them in new learning contexts.

Presenting our learning

• Our initial facts, sketch of eggs and our individual questions

• Photos of the development of a baby chick for discussion with our parents/caregivers

• Our visual report on the needs of a baby chick

A few weeks later…..reunion!

What we all learned…..

By the end of this unit we knew…• The observable properties of an egg• The difference between fertilized and unfertilized eggs and how they could

tell• How a chick grows and develops in the egg • What sustains the chick in the egg• Why we need both kinds of egg (fertilized and unfertilized)• What hens do with eggs on the nest• How to provide a safe and healthy environment for baby chicks • That not all chicks make it safely out of the egg• That meringues taste yummy raw and cooked and the properties of eggs

change when mixed • That lots of other animals begin life by hatching out of an egg, but not all • How to ask good questions• How they might find answers and/or ask more questions…• How to report our findings

Where to next…….?

WE COULD PURSUE THIS LINE OF INQUIRY……

• A student asked if next term we could do pigs. Mrs McPhail said she would think about that one…..she is still thinking!

• We could explore the question ..”Do just birds lay eggs?

OR WE COULD PRACTISE NEWLY DEVELOPED INQUIRY SKILLS IN A COMPLETELY NEW CONTEXT

• Our current Inquiry on Structures and Mechanisms within a

bike/scooter context is requiring us to use the Inquiry skills we learned from this Egg Unit.

David’s thinking…….

Starsha’s Story • Once, a little girl found an egg on the ground. The egg was bigger

than an ostrich egg. It was white. She put the egg under her pillow.

• When she went to sleep the egg hatched. She did not know until it was the morning. It was a Pelican. She put the Pelican in the Chicken House with the Hens and the Rooster. They were eating the corn. The Pelican did not like the corn because the corn was too crunchy and hard.

• So the Pelican flew to the sea. The sea was greeny blue and sparkly. There was fish in the sparkly sea but he did not know how to catch fish.

• So the Pelican found an adult Pelican called Pearl. Pearl taught the Baby Pelican how to catch fish. The two Pelicans lived happily ever after because they were together.By Starsha30 October 2008

Inquiry Process Summary

Reflections• This unit of learning was hugely successful in terms of the enjoyment and participation by the students and the

involvement of the wider school community (staff, parents etc).• Because the direction was driven by the interests of the children it was met each day with further questions and

further learning challenges for us all.• There was a need for regular dialogue between Dianne and myself as we went from a planned unit to an evolving

inquiry so that we were able to keep focused on the learning needs within this context.• We found that by publishing the children’s individual questions, we were able to constantly refer to them and the

children could assess whether their question had been answered during the process.• The children had been learning questioning skills in previous terms and so they were prepared for asking

questions. We could see the results of these skills when we began this unit and as the unit progressed.• The literacy links were strong and it was easy to motivate the students with reading and writing within this context

because of the interest factor in hatching baby chicks.• This process has challenged the way we approach planning and we are constantly on the look out for what the

children want to know, and how we can teach them the necessary skills to unlock that knowledge.