Fantastic Sci Activty Needed

[Guest]

Hi all,

We found out today we are having an ofsted monitoring inspection on Thursday next week. It is 18 months since our last one and they are sampling 5% of schools to visit half way through the inspection cycle to check on progress against the issues identified for further improvement.

 

Foundation Stage was graded as good last time and the only key issue that is relevant to us is to raise standards in Science by the end of KS2. I have volunteered to teach a science lesson (not sure why ) on Thursday which head thinks is probably going to be watched. I need something really great and was hoping somebody would have some amazing ideas - I'm in Reception. My topic at the moment is houses/homes and we are doing the three little pigs next week.

 

Thanks in anticipation.

 

[Rea]

Hi Ariel, 3 little pigs lends itself to lots of investigation with materials.

If you have the space, could you give the children various materials like compost, sand, flour with water for making cement and bricks to see how they can build a wall. Which makes the best cement, do the walls stay standing, what could they have tried?

Hope it goes well

[Marion]

Three Little Pigs House

 

Materials:

 

* small world pig

* drawing paper

* a variety of building materials: toothpicks, clay, Legos, blocks, paper, cardboard, plastic, polystyrene , etc.

 

Books:

 

* A traditional version of The Three Little Pigs

* The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, by Jon Scieszka

 

 

Motivation

 

Begin by asking :

 

* If you were going to build a house, what material would you use?

* What makes this a good material for building a house?

 

Show childre the pig model. Tell children that their job is to design a tiny model house for the pig" Have children draw a picture of the house that they would build.

 

Development

 

Read a traditional version of The Three Little Pigs.

 

Ask children:

 

* What materials did the pigs use to build their houses?

* Why do you think they chose straw? Sticks? Bricks?

* Look at the house that you drew. Do you think that the wolf could have blown your house down? Why or why not?

 

 

Read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka, in which the tale is retold from the wolf's perspective. In this version of the story, the wolf suggests that he unintentionally sneezed on the houses, which were only destroyed because of the shabby building materials that the pigs used.

 

Ask children:

 

* Do you agree with the wolf when he says that the pigs used poor building materials?

* Which pig(s) chose a poor material for building a house?

* What makes this a poor building material?

* What other materials could they have used? (Create a list of student ideas.)

* If you were going to build a house for the pigs, what material would you choose?

* What makes this a good material for building a house?

* Are the materials available in the classroom? If not, where could you find them?

* Would you need special tools to build with these materials? What kinds of tools?

 

Remind children that their job is to design a tiny model house for the pig." They can choose from any of the available classroom materials, but they should first spend some time investigating which materials would be the best for this task.

 

Work as a class/group to set criteria for deciding whether something is a good building material or not. Children might consider factors such as:

 

* What are the properties of the material?

* Where can you find it? Can you find it easily?

* Do you need to use special tools to work with this material?

* What happens to this material when it gets wet?

* Is it a strong material?

* Is it heavy or light?

 

 

After listening to, talking about and retelling the story of 'The Three Little Pigs' children explored straw, bricks and sticks with their senses. They described the materials using words such as prickly and smelly and used comparative language such as harder than and stronger than (Language and Literacy). They used a sponge to print the pattern of bricks (Creative Development). The children had the opportunity to plan together, share and consider each other's opinions when exploring and solving the problem of how to build a strong house out of each material (Personal and Social Education, Knowledge and Understanding (Design and Technology)). Building the house involved gross and fine motor skills (Physical Development). The children then compared their houses with their own homes and could compare them with homes around the world and homes in the past (Knowledge and Understanding Geography and History).

 

Good Luck

[Guest]

There's a lovely IWB powerpoint presentation on the TES site about materials too and the three pigs, you just need to go on there and search for three pigs

 

aisha xoxo

[Guest]

Just needed to say thak you to Marion - love the ideas for the three little pigs house and that has saved me a lot of thinking time today - what fab ideas, i love searching through the forum posts only trouble is I often get sidetracked and lose a few hours in the process!!