Friday 2 December, 2016.
Show and Tell Session: Sarah brought in a butterfly to show Helen.
I showed my musical box from China and Helen showed us her lovely music moving hands.
WALT: Explore our construction ability by building bridges linking our community maps together.
Helen liked last week’s group work so much that she thought the children could put together the maps with bridges and create a city.
We had a chat about cities. They are big. Lots of people live in them. They have all sorts of buildings, shops, offices, a Town/City Hall, skyscrapers, streets, houses, small roads, big roads, churches. Belfast is a city. Dublin is a city. London, New York, Paris are cities.
We talked about bridges. People walk over bridges. Cars go over bridges. Trains and lorries go over bridges.
Why do we need bridges? To connect places and people. They go over rivers, streams, roads.
What makes a good bridge? It has to be strong.
What are bridges made of? Metal, wood, rope. We have a famous rope bridge in Northern Ireland called the Carrick-a -rede Rope Bridge.
Stephen said there is a famous bridge in San Francisco called The Golden Gate Bridge.
Helen showed us some images of different types of bridges around the world:
Sophie said that one of them was “an iconic tower bridge.” WOW.
We saw a wooden river bridge in Sri Lanka which connects houses. Everyone thought the people walking over it were very clever to cross without a barrier to hold onto.
A bridge in Pakistan was made from tree vines which are very strong. We said that Tarzan uses vines in his films.
We saw photos of Brooklyn Bridge in New York.
We saw viaduct bridges in Ireland that dated back to Roman times.
We saw Skybridge, which is in the jungle in South America. Sophie liked the bushes and mountains around it. Tia, Sarah and Ryan liked the “massive forest of trees.”
We saw another bridge which is the longest bridge in the world and connects islands around China.
I said that in the Summer I had walked over a very exciting bridge in Kew Gardens, which is near London. It is built high above the tree line so that you feel as if you are walking on top of the trees.
Helen’s last bridge image showed a very unique bridge in London which can be rolled out over a canal and used as a footbridge. When a barge wants to pass by, it can be rolled back again.
Helen asked if the children thought some of the bridges were safe.
Oisin said that the bridge in the forest was safe to cross as it was made of strong wooden planks and it was not very high.
Olivia thought one bridge was dangerous because it did not have a barrier at the side and you could fall off into the fast river.
Eimear thought it could easily break.
Cloidhna and Ronan thought one of the bridges looked slippery so it was dangerous to walk on.
Helen made some bridges and let us see what they looked like.
After all this discussion, the children got into groups and they had to work out what sort of bridge they wanted to make, and what materials they would need.
We talked about the importance of TENSION…that’s another word to remember.
Each bridge had to connect each table, not the maps themselves, and it had to be 2 foot long.
MATERIALS: I gave the boys and girls a selection of materials:
- cardboard / paper
- sellotape / masking tape/ double-sided tape
- string /wool
- pipe cleaners / cotton buds
- lollipop sticks / straws
- corrugated paper / coloured sticky shapes
- glue
The bridge making process required THINKING, DESIGNING, EXPERIMENTING and BUILDING.
It also necessitated me having to move a lot of furniture! But it was well worth the effort.
Another fabulous session came to an end.
Mrs. Morgan, the Acting Principal wanted to see the bridges connecting the “cities” before they had to be dismantled at lunchtime. She was gobsmacked when she saw them and said what a wonderful opportunity for creativity, improving thinking skills and general connected learning!
