St. Pancras Progress Report
This was the final session before the onslaught of Christmas and the original pupil groups were interviewed for a second time. Photographs were taken of the wildspace area and plans for its development were beginning to emerge alongside the continued use of Knowledge Forum.
The research team is very grateful to John Jones for his help in the project at all times.
This session was delayed from last week due to other school matters. Its purpose was to focus on key points emerging from the views and to turn these into rise-above notes for further discussion and elaboration. There is a need now to focus on the creation of a wildspace area in the school grounds and an hour was spent discussing this as a group.
The use of KF, which had allowed for several free-ranging thoughts ranging from planets and why seas are salty to the starting point of the water cycle, seemed to generate some interesting thoughts regarding the wildspace area. For example, the idea of two ponds, one kept salty and the other not, to show how different plants and creatures use them. Another idea concerned putting a dome of some sort over one of the ponds in order to 'mimmick' the water cycle.
These ideas and others will now be worked up further so that a presentation can be made to the school, Head and governors at the end of term.
As a result of the work at Rodmell and Barcombe, we decided to bring in a scientist earlier into the process and so entomologist Peter Hodge described to the pupils how he goes about studying insects. His trays of moths and beetles were of great interest.
A second session focussed on the planned wildspace area for the school and the inter-relationships between plants and insects.
The final part of the morning was spent on Knowledge Forum as a way of reflecting on what Peter had said and exploring points that it had raised in the pupils’ minds.
There are still problems with the software which is frustrating but arguably inevitable for a pilot project. Despite this, it is interesting to note the excitement and enthusiasm of both the teacher and the pupils working within a limited use of the software.
Today the pupils were introduced to the blog facility and some have already begun to use this.
The first planned session was delayed due to a funeral and so a short introductory session to Knowledge Forum took place at the end of a Friday. Work had started on plants and habitats and when asked to supply a question or idea to enter into Knowledge Forum, one pupil wondered if plants had feelings. This was entered within the Knowledge Forum database and we will will see how this theme / question progresses or not.
We learned from the first two schools that it is a good idea to bring a scientist in earlier and so the class will be joined by entomologist, Peter Hodge, on 11th October.