Transportation--Connecting and Creating Dances

The Grade One students are becoming knowledgable about many different forms of transportation and how they move in varied ways.  Students have been making connections between these forms of transportation and ways that they can be expressed in dance.

One of the concepts students focused on was "Fantastic Shapes."  To make an interesting shape, students remember the following steps:
-Move your feet
-Move your arms
-Move your torso
-Move your head and change your expression

Students made various transportation poses, melting from one pose to the next.  By making poses in this manner, students create more complex and interesting poses.

They reviewed their knowledge of locomotor movements, moving from one place to another by skipping, jumping, hopping, tiptoeing, running, leaping, etc.  To go further, students learned about axial movements, movements in one place, such as stretching, spinning, swaying, etc.

The next concept students explored was pathways.  Students thought about each type of transportation and move in a straight, curvy, or zigzag pathway.

The most challenging concept for students was the idea of flow.  When we thought about kinds of transportation, some traffic can move easily for long periods of time, whereas other kinds of vehicles stop and go.  In dance, we call this free flow and bound flow.

Students created dance pieces connecting these concepts with their knowledge of transportation.  Students performed their dances for their peers and received feedback.  We will share our final dance at the upcoming assembly.

Can you tell what kind of transportation we are dancing about?

What do you like about our dancing?

Students are watching their peers share their transportation dances.

Students give feedback.  What did you like about our dances?  What could be improved?

Now you know how the students made their dances.  They look forward to sharing their Transportation Dances with you at their assembly.  

How do transport systems change over time?

Our third line of inquiry is "The ways that transport systems change over time". As part of this we read the book "Let's Go!: The Story of Getting from There to Here" by Lizann Flatt. The book shows how the earliest humans used transport and how it developed over time. It also looks at how the transport system developed too. Can you go through and identify the modes of transport and decide if they are human powered, animal powered, steam powered or fuel powered. Also, for each page can you identify the reasons that people needed this new form of transport? To do this you will need to be curious and reflective! Here are some slides of the book. All you have to do is click on the forward or backwards buttons to move through the slide show.

Collecting Data About How Seisen Students Get To School

This week the Grade 1 students have been learning how to collect DATA to answer questions about Transport.  We started the week wanting to investigate how the students in Grade 1 come to school. We came up with the survey question "How Do You Get To School?" and the girls surveyed a number of children from their own class. 

We found that each the girls' surveys had different information, so we then decided to collect data from the entire grade in the form of a pictograph. This way we would easily be able to see how many students came by which mode of transport. 

From interpreting our class pictographs we found out that in Grade 1A most children came to school by bus but in Grade 1B most children came by car. How interesting! 

This really got us thinking.  We wondered if the rest of the school would have similar results.  Did most girls at Seisen travel to school by car or bus? How could we find out?  We decided to survey a larger number of children, this time from the Kindergarten.  We created our own survey in partners and learnt how to use tally marks to quickly record and interpret data. 

Emi P, Natsuki, Maiko and Matilde asking the children from Snowdrops how they get to school. 

Erica interviewing a boy from Primrose 

Sarah leading her group as they interview the kindergarten students in Primrose. 

Here is an example of Sarah's data she collected from the Primrose class. 

On returning back to the Elementary School we discussed our results and learnt about how to present this data as a bar graph. 

This was the first time the children had learnt about presenting their data as a bar graph. We came up with some 'Steps To Success' to refer to if we got stuck or were unsure of what to do next. 

Here is Mio's completed bar graph showing the modes of transport Daffodil class use to get to school. 

Next week will be our last week on our How We Organise Ourselves inquiry on Transport. Stay tuned for a survey coming home next week, where the girls will be interviewing family members about the decisions they make when choosing a mode of transport.  

Investigating Transport Systems....

As part of our Transport unit of inquiry, we walked into Yoga city centre this week. The purpose of this was to identify different parts of the train, bus and pedestrian transport systems.








Each photo has a question below. See if you can answer it!

 What could happen if we took away this metal barrier?

What would it be like without those white road markings?

If cars did not see any white arrows on the road, what could happen?

Without this information at the bus stop or the bus stop itself, what could happen?

This sign says No Parking of Bicycles. If there were no signs to tell people not to park on the pavement, what could happen? (Nice shoe in the bottom corner! I wonder whose that is?)

Why would happen if pedestrians smoked as they walked around and dropped their cigarettes wherever they felt like it?

If you didn't have this information as you got off the train, what problems might you have?

If there were no machines like this, what would that mean?

What would happen if there was no ticket gate?

What a happy bunch! 

Why are there so many bikes parked close to the station?

Is an escalator a form of transport or not?

This information tells you if there are any train delays. Why do people want to know this?