Wairarapa Moana practise session

Our second in-class session with Zoe on Thursday morning, saw us have a go at using the water testing equipment.

We looked at the clarity of the water, the conductivity, the temperature, and how to test how fast a stream or river is flowing.

We also looked at charts of aquatic insects.

Pulling all of this information together, we now believe we will be able to determine the overall health of streams and rivers.  Unfortunately, our imaginary classroom river flowed too fast and was too warm to have much aquatic life living in it.  Lets hope the rivers we are going to visit will be better.

During this session, the students were required to draw on their recent reading about what affects water temperature, water evaporation, and water clarity; they used their knowledge of finding averages when testing each aspect three times; they practised measuring time and temperature with accuracy; and practised reading charts, pulling together at least three different pieces of information to determine what life they might find in their imaginary steams.

These skills will be further developed on our field trips, as well as providing us with real data we can use in our statistics learning.

In the beginning...

The term has started with a rip and a roar!!
We have made a good start towards our Wairarapa Moana Inquiry learning.  Our first in-class session with Zoe saw us learn about wetlands and water catchments.
Here is our catchment salute!!

In our reading this week, we have been learning about the life cycle of eels and giant kokopu, and have also read about fish tagging, counting the fish population, and on what lives in drains under the cities.

We have been learning about the water cycle, conducting experiments to prove theories about transpiration and evaporation.

To test for transpiration (water that is drawn up from the roots of plants, and then released as vapour), we placed plastic bags on some tree branches, sealed with rubber bands, in the morning.

Later on in the day, we went and checked on them.  We found water had condensed inside the plastic bag and had pooled on the bottom.  We can now see that plants release water vapour into the air, even thought we can't see it.  We also learnt that plants are responsible for 10% of the atmospheric moisture through transpiration (and we also learnt how to get water if we were stuck somewhere and only had a plastic bag!).

To test the theory of evaporation from large bodies of water, we poured some water into the bottom of a large bowl, placed a small empty bowl in the middle, then covered it all with plastic.  We then placed a rock (or metal container) in the center of the plastic and left it outside in the sun.

When we went back to check on them later, the one with the stone on the top of it had a small amount of water in the small bowl.  The water had evaporated from the large bowl, condensed on the plastic, then dripped down into the small bowl.  

The experiment with the container on it did not seem to work so well.  We wondered if it was the container that was the problem, or (more likely) that there was a gap in the plastic on the top.

Welcome to our Class Blog

Welcome to the terrific Takitimu's Class blog.
Here you will find celebrations of our learning, exciting outings, opportunities and events, notices specific to our class, and weekly home learning activities.  The Blog will be updated most weeks so please keep checking in for updates.

Aren't we a great looking bunch!