Ballydown P.S. | Teacher Journal

Looking and Seeing

P2 (2016 -2017), Miss White and Ann

When we removed the pictures from the water, the patterns they had made were fantastic! Infact, they were so fantastic and I enjoyed looking at them so much that I seemed to forget to take enough photos of them!! Ann then promptly stole all our pictures and removed them to Rathlin Island so that she could admire them and take photos…. but we’ll look forward to seeing them again soon! Don’t you just love the coal on this one below!!

After waiting patiently until after lunch, it was finally time to check on our magic paper!! Each pair had to bring their whiteboard and objects over to the water-tray. Then, very quickly, they removed their objects and plunged their paper into the water until it began to change colour and was ‘fixed’. As a teacher I found it heart-warming to see the excitement on the kids faces as their paper revealed the patterns and shapes of their dismantled objects. It was also lovely to see my P5 pupils directing, guiding and helping their P2 partners. I was a very proud teacher!

After carefully agreeing how best to dismantle and organised their objects on their half of an A5 piece of paper, Ann explained to P5 and P2 that they were going to be given a piece of MAGIC paper. They then had to transfer their objects from their whiteboard onto the magic paper as quickly as possible before moving it all to the window to develop… exciting times

This week was the start of something completely different. Half of my class went down to join P2, and half of Miss White’s P2 class came to join me in P5. We paired the pupils up – one P5 and one P2 together and asked them to work together. Each pupil was asked to bring in some objects from home – one natural and one man-made. Each pair then had to look at their objects and pick one each to dismantle and arrange on their whiteboard. The variety of dismantling techniques was fantastic – from unscrewing different parts.. to smashing tiles on the floor – never a dull moment during this project!

We placed our ‘pictures’ on top of an overhead-projector, which we used as a light box. The light shone through our dismantled objects, creating beautiful patterns and colours!

The next stage was to place different parts of our dismantled objects between 2 sheets of unlaminated paper to place on a light box – seeing things in a different way

Each group tried to separate and identify the different parts of their fruit/vegetable as they dismantled it

This group decided to peel the skin of the cucumber first, before slicing and cutting it up to identify the different parts. The main problem I had with this group was trying to persuade them not to EAT the cucumber as they dismantled it, ha ha!

 The banana group decided to peel and slice their banana to find the tiny seeds inside

The class were divided into groups and given one piece of fruit or vegetable per group. It was up to that group to carefully plan how they were going to dismantle their object. They had to think about the different parts which they could identify – skin, flesh, seeds etc. – and also what they would use to separate these parts