Throughout March and April, we have been having lots of fun with our science unit on living systems.
We first looked at a series of pictures of different seeds and fruit and we made connections about the relationship between them. This stimulated lots of discussion and we demonstrated that we had lots of prior knowledge on life cycles already.
To explore sexual reproduction in plants, we became scientists, whereby we dissected tulips to identify the different parts of a flower that enables sexual reproduction to occur. Dissecting the tulip required us to be careful and required lots of concentration due to how delicate it was to remove the different parts.
We took our understanding further by looking at how seeds are dispersed in order for them to germinate and grow into new plants. To secure our knowledge we carried out an exploding seed experiment. While creating a stimulation of a seed pod, we used our thinking skills to solve the problem of how to get seeds into a balloon. Working together as a team, we figured out that we needed to create a funnel so the seeds could be put inside the balloon. Once we blew the balloon up we were ready to go outside and burst the balloon to watch how seed dispersal occurs. It was lots of fun watching the seeds fly around once the balloon was popped.
In addition to the experiments, we have explored the asexual reproduction of plants and we have written scientific reports about the life cycle of plants. We have also carried out independent research where we became experts in different life cycles of animals, evolution and how plants adapt to their environment to survive. We presented our expert knowledge to the class and everyone was inquisitive asking many questions.
We finished our unit by imagining we were TV Presenters creating a documentary about living systems. In small groups, we researched information about different aspects of living systems, we created TV scripts and props before performing our documentary to a live audience. We had lots of fun doing this and we showed how far our knowledge has been extended throughout the unit.
