What is inside us? cont.

Earlier in the week I had, had a discussion with the class about what they thought was inside a dinosaur. I was interested that the children named very few internal organs and had little idea as to what these organs actually did for us. I wondered if this lack of knowledge was due to the fact that we were talking about a dinosaurs body and not the human body. In order to find out whether this was the case I asked the children to draw an outline of a human and a dinosaur and asked them to draw what was inside each and label them if they could. After the children had completed their drawings myself and a teacher aide assisted with labelling and wrote explanations for the children of what they thought each organ did. This is a summary of what they thought.
Heart
Pumps blood around the body
Keeps us breathing
Pumps blood out to the body
Helps you breath
Pumps your blood around so you can keep breathing. If you run fast all time it is beating.
It helps you think of other stuff
Pumps, it helps you run around
Pumps your blood around your body to keep it running
Pumps your blood so you can breathe
It helps you get good skin
Bones
Make us move
Keeps your arms and body so they are not floppy
They are the things that make you stand up properly, you would be like oil without them.
Help you move
If you didn’t have them you would be floppy
Bones connect to bones connect to bones and twisty bones to help you move.
So we are not wobbly
Intestines
Slides the food through
The food slips down it.
Veins
Makes your body move.
For blood to go through
Muscles
Make you move and get stronger
Stomach
Helps the food break down
Mostly does nothing
Helps you breath
Bubbling stomach so it can dissolve the food.
So you can eat
Spine
Helps us bend
Blood
Helps you stay alive
Helps you live
It is like oil for a car you need it to keep your bones going.
It comes out when you hurt yourself.
Lungs
Help you breathe, cords run to your mouth and lets air into you lungs.
Brain
Makes you smart
Helps you think
It makes you have great ideas
Helps you move
Keeps things working
Helps you think of stuff.
Makes you remember things
Helps you thin and helps you spell.
Tells your body what to do

Fossils: How did the dinosaurs get in the rocks and how do they get them out.

While at the school library the children spent a large amount of time in the non-fiction section of the library trying to find information about dinosaurs. Alicya found a page in a book which showed a dinosaur skeleton in a wall of rock and people attempting to uncover it.

Alicya: How do they get the dinosaurs out of the wall and how did the dinosaurs get in the wall? Maybe they fell down and hit the wall and stayed there for millions of years and the dinosaurs pushed into the wall.

Alicya got the book out of the library and when we returned to class we shared it with the class and asked them what they thought might have happened.

Thomas: I think a dinosaur pushed the other dinosaur into the wall.

Molly: How did it get covered up because there weren’t any people alive.

Shawn: It might have fallen down on top of the rock and got sucked in.

Alicya: It couldn’t get out so it died.

Eve: I think the dinosaur was walking and rock fell on him and he died.

Quinn: If the volcano erupts and heaps of dust comes and frozes on the dinosaur and they have to get a huge truck to put it on to get it to the museum.

Bradley: I disagree with Shawn, the rock couldn’t suck the dinosaur in and I’ve lied on a rock and I didn’t sink in. They get them out with special tools and I’ve seen it on T.V.

Gabriella: The dinosaurs used their claws and reach in to get the rock out. They eat another dinosaur and put the bones in the hole and then the people find them.

 

Noah: The lava makes, the dinosaurs die and the lava goes over them and the lava turns them to rock. I saw it on Atlantis.

Keira: When the dinosaurs walked it was probably sinking sand and it turned into rocks. The people found them and got them out with special tools but I don’t know how they don’t break them.

Ashtyn: The dinosaur hunters climb the rocks with things around their tummies, they throw a hook and pull themselves up.

Emelia: Some dinosaurs eat other dinosaurs and threw them in millions of years ago.

Molly: When the other dinosaurs eats a dinosaur it leaves the bones when there is an aftershock a dinosaur takes the bones to a hole and then puts the bone in so the dirt falls on them.

Alicya: The volcano pushes the dinosaur into the rock and after millions of years it turns to stone.

Gabriella: The dinosaur pushes a dinosaur against the wall. Then it makes a big hole and puts it in while it is still alive then the rock closes and then it can’t breathe so it dies.

Crystal: they find the bones and a machine carefully digs them up, then they brush off the dust and they glue it all up because they don’t want it to fall down.

Were dinosaurs warm blooded, cold blooded, reptile, mammal?

The children have been interacting with different sources of information over the past week or so and have been bringing up some concepts and understandings that they have heard or read about but don’t necessarily fully grasp. These discussions have shown children making connections with their prior understandings and the new information they have encountered, it is also interesting to listen to how they agree with and  build on to each others ideas or disagree with statements and introduce new theories. This discussion arose before school started seemingly from nowhere. But introduced some huge concepts that we will now explore further.

Jewels: A T-Rex was just a giant lizard which is a mammal. (What is a mammal?) We’re mammals, it’s a thing with meat in it. It’s warm blooded and lizards are cold blooded  they are probably outside all the time and we are inside.

Sean: The mammals are type of animals.

Alicya: but we’re not animals.

Sean: Reptiles are types of animals too.

Noah: Dinosaurs are mammals but they are bigger than  people and they have horns but if dinosaurs were people we would have horns but they can’t be people because they died before us.

At this stage the discussion ceased because bell went and had to attend assembly. On our return, I read a library book brought along by one of the children about dinosaur babies. I the opening pages it stated that Dinosaurs were reptiles.

Jewels: dinosaurs aren’t reptiles because they are mammals, because they have warm meat.

Crystal: and warm blood. 

Bradley: They spend most of their time outside so they must be cold blooded.

Ashton: I disagree, they spend most of their time outside so the must be hot blooded.

Jewels: because of the sun they must be hot.

Harriet: Dinosaurs have to go outside so they can eat meat.

Alicya: If there was a volcano that exploded it must have been very hot so they must have been hot blooded.

Noah: some dinosaurs are hot and some are cold and some are both.

Sean: T-Rex is hot blooded but it eats cold blooded and hot blooded dinosaurs so it has both inside it.

Emelia: Some animals have hot and cold blood.

Lucia: I am warm blooded

Jewels: I’m both because it gets cold sometimes.

Shawn: If you went to the south pole.

Lucia: It is freezing.

Jewels: You would be definitely be cold blooded.

Alicya: How do we know what colour dinosaur blood is?

Noah: Red

Jewels: Some blood is white.

 

At this stage the children’s understanding of warm blooded and cold blooded is that it is determined by the temperature of the environment in which they live and  the blood type of the animals they are eating.

Gallery Seven - Week 4, Term 1, 2012

Dinosaurs, dinosaurs, dinosaurs!!

This week  at Kowhai assembly  Ashtyn and Shawn received our Kowhai Express Star awards. Ashtyn got her for being an engaged student who always giver her best. Shawn got his for being a self managing student who is always ready to learn.

Our Learning about dinosaurs continued this week, we all voted by way of completing a pictograph for which dinosaur we wanted to make a sculpture of. It ended up as a tie between Stegosaurus and Ankylosaurus, so we all had to then cast a vote for one of those, Ankylosaurus won 16 to 9.  We also decided after previous discussion that we would make a wire and papier mache model but we are building a base to put the wire on. We found a good picture of Ankylosaurus in a book and have started construction. Mr Tree came in and helped us to cut some cardboard tubes with a saw to make our sculptures legs, we have filled a large bag with paper to make the base for his body and have rolled some wire mesh to make part of his tail.

Miss Bailey from Room 13 gave us some dinosaur books to look at which have started some very interesting discussions about whether dinosaurs were warm blooded, cold blooded, reptiles or mammals, we also talked about how the dinosaur skeletons became stuck in the rock and  how they people get them out of the rock. Miss Bailey also lent us some felt boards and we have been making some dinosaur scenes. Mr Shalfoon lent us some wooden dinosaur skeletons to look at which is great because we are going to enlarge a small skeleton to make a big 3D Carnivore puzzle as the one of our sculptures.

Kyla brought one of her budgies to school for us to look at, she was only 6 weeks old and we got to name her. We decided to call her Holly. Kyla’s mum breeds budgies so they have lots of them. Holly talked a lot during the day and some of us even wrote stories about her at writing time.

Bradley and Molly were our Artisan award winners this week. They both got their awards for being enthusiastic and  active participants in our Reggio learning.

Was tyrannosaurus Rex Mean cont.

After our conversation the previous day about whether T-Rex was mean I pulled out some key statements that I wanted the children to look at and comment on.

If you eat meat you are mean.

The world was a shop and the animals were the food.

They’re not mean, they just needed food.

He is mean because h kills other dinosaurs to take to his home for his babies.

Molly: They really do  need to eat food or they’ll die. So he’s not mean.

Quinn: I disagree because T-Rex may end up being the only dinosaur left. (Because he ate all the others)

Alicya: They had to kill the other dinosaurs or they’d die and their families would miss them.

Harriet: They needed it, they’re not mean, if they didn’t they would die.

Gabriella: It would die if it didn’t have food.

Miss Bell: So what you are saying is that T-Rex needed meat and the meat was the other dinosaurs. He wasn’t mean because he had to eat meat or he would die. So could T-Rex be kind?

Alicya: He could ask the plant eaters if they wanted meat.

Quinn: People think they are mean because they look scary, that doesn’t make sense. If they were a plant eater we wouldn’t be scared.

Alicya: They would frighten the little dinosaur away because he is so big.

At his point I asked Thomas to read out his statement about T-Rex taking food to his babies.

Ashtyn: He takes meat to his babies, he cares for them.

Alicya: They are nice to baby dinosaurs, if they are alone and they might look after them.

Molly: They’re trying to make their babies grow, so they grow into big

dinosaurs so that they can feed their own babies.

Ashtyn: It’s not nice to call him mean because we eat meat and we’re not mean.

Matt: Dinosaurs aren’t mean because if they don’t eat meat they’ll die and get eaten by other dinosaurs.

What is inside a dinosaur?

Today before school Thomas and Alicya were looking at a dinosaur book. There was a picture in the book of a Tyrannosaurus stripped of skin and muscle revealing a skeleton and the internal organs.

Thomas: Look I can see inside the dinosaur.

Alicya: Look he has worms in him.

Thomas: We could make all the bits in the sculpture.

Alicya: It is a sculpture.

The bell rang so I said lets look at it with the class. I talked to the class about the discussion so far and this is what followed.

Miss B: What is inside the dinosaur?

Jewels: The worms aren’t actually worms, they’re the testiness.

Keira: It’s what they eat.

Alicya: Muscle and bones

Keira: the heart and all he eats.

Sean: Veins they’re the things that help your blood running.

Jewels: The food slides through the intestines to the tummy and the heart pumps the blood.

Quinn: If it doesn’t pump you can’t breathe and then you might die. We have little green ones in our wrist.

Sean: I have purple ones.

Molly: I have purple and blue ones.

Kyla: I have pink ones.

Noah: I know how he dies when a triceratops comes to get his babies the horn goes through the heart.

Sean: Only sometimes if it gets in the right place.

Jasmine: The blood it goes around the body.

Shawn: It makes you breathe

Molly: If you didn't have blood you’d be all pale and white. The red makes it darker.

Alicya: It make you stay alive.

Ashtyn: It makes your bones stronger.

Quinn: If you didn’t have blood and you cut yourself it would be white and your skin would be dry.

 

Noah: the blood keeps the body running and if it was all dry inside and you would just stand like a statue.

Jasmine: Bones make you move.

Emelia: The bones keep him and his heart going.

Sean: He has chemicals to keep his blood going.

Keira: He has bones on his back, if he didn’t, he’d be all floppy.

Alicya: He has a chest, it’s the thing that is beside your heart and it pumps when you’re running and you can feel it.

Noah:  He has bad chemicals. Maybe he has acid on his teeth to help kill animals.

Molly: Kidneys, I don’t know what they do.

Ashton: the worm things might lead to the bottom.

Molly: they probably wont.

Keira: I think when a dinosaur eats all the meat the dinosaur body keeps all the good stuff and gets rid of the bad stuff.

Alicya: How would it get rid of the bad stuff?

Keira: It would probably do poos and wees.

Ashtyn: Maybe the blood is protecting its bones and when it gets hit it goes into the blood but not the bones.

Matt: When the dinosaur loses the blood, his body makes more.

Ashtyn: I think we have more layers of skin than a dinosaur cause we have 7 layers and they have about 3.

Matt: It makes more blood to make it heal.

Ashtyn: I think they have harder skin than us.

Noah: T-Rex doesn’t make blood. When Triceratops got him the T-Rex’s blood goes into the Triceratops horns and it makes the horns stronger.

Shaun: When the Triceratops is running the T-Rex will get stabbed and the blood will come out and then the T-rex will pretend to move and take the blood back out of the Triceratops horns.

Ashtyn: Maybe some of the blood keeps going around instead of coming out.

Was Tyrannosaurus Rex really mean?

When reading the children’s stories the other day, I noticed that the children always talked about carnivores as mean and herbivores as nice even when they were gouging with their horns and beating with their clubs. So I wanted to as they children why they thought T-Rex was mean.

Ashtyn: Yes he is mean because he kills other dinosaurs.

Thomas: He is mean because he kills other dinosaurs to take to his home for his babies.

Kyla: Mean, he tries to eat other dinosaurs.

Zoe: He is mean, he tries to eat other dinosaurs and he runs fast to catch other dinosaurs.

Bradley: Who made dinosaurs anyway? Maybe god was alive back then?

?: He’s alive now.

Shaun: No, he’s dead. He’s in heaven and only dead people live in heaven.

Harriet: He’s mean because he roars loud and bites other dinosaurs.

Quinn: He’s mean because his favourite food is Triceratops.

Lucia: He’s mean because he eats other nice dinosaurs.

Miss B: What are T-Rexs special features?

Molly : Big legs to run fast.

Lucia: Sharp teeth for ripping

Gabriella: Sharp claws for grabbing.

Miss B: So what are they designed to do?

Eat meat, catch dinosaurs etc.

We discussed the fact that he wasn’t made for eating plants and that he would die if he didn’t eat meat, their was a side discussion on the fact that he could live on water alone but this was quickly dispelled.

Miss B: So you think because he eats meat he is mean?

Unanimous yes

Miss B: So do you eat meat? Do your dog and cat eat meat? Are you mean? Are they mean?

Unanimous No

Miss B: So you buy your meat from the supermarket instead of chasing it, could T-Rex do that?

Unanimous No

Ashtyn: So the world was the shop and the animals were the food.

Matt: They’re not mean they just needed food.

Gabriella: I eat both.

Miss B: So you are an omnivore.

What makes Herbivore and Carnivore dinosaurs different?

Herbivores

Some have long necks to reach trees.

Most walk on 4 legs.

Horns, bony frills

Plates, spike, clubs

Long tails

Carnivores

Sharp Teeth

Sharp Claws

Most stand on two legs so they can run fast.

The children discovered today that the most of the  herbivore dinosaurs had special features that they used for protection and that the Carnivore dinosaurs had special features that allowed them to attack other dinosaurs and rip and tear meat.