YEAR 5 - INQUIRY - Earth and Space Science

Lyn Sharratt’s 5 critical questions

Wander into any classroom at Mary MacKillop and you will notice Lyn Sharratt’s 5 critical questions on display. These questions engage students in self-assessment and self-evaluation of their learning in order to improve it.   

The 5 critical questions help us realise where we are right now in our learning and help us get to the next step (Toby)

What are you learning?

We have been learning how the planets orbit the Sun, natural disasters and about animal adaptations.  (Dennish) 

How are you doing?

Space 

Planets - I learnt the order of the planets from the poem ‘My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nachos. The first letter of each word is for the name of the planet. (Casiana)

We have been learning about the planets in our solar system and the Sun. The Sun is actually a star and it’s white. (Hus)

We understand how Earth is on an angle and how all seasons occur. (Wuri)

Earth - Natural disasters 

I learnt that disasters can destroy habitats of animals and humans. (Lattika)

I learnt how fungi grows on food. Different temperatures change the time the mould takes to grow. The hotter the temperature, the faster the mould grows.  (Eleanor, Jaxon and Tilly)

I learnt how Australian animals can survive in different environments. For example, the koala has a strong digestive system that detoxifies the chemicals in eucalyptus leaves. (Amir and John)

How do you know?

I think we are all doing amazing in all of our science because before we start our lesson we read the learning intention and success criteria. (David)

The Earth and Space incursion helped me because they used physical representations of the moon and Earth and we used a torch and globe to learn about the seasons.  (Toby)

The Science excursion helped us learn because the lady showed us examples and how little we are compared to the sun. (Aaria)

We can understand and explain our new learning. We do experiments and predict what will happen. (Katya)

We used observations to learn how the food changed, for example what the food smelt like and looked like. (Tyler)

How do you improve?

We have to ask questions.We can research about Space to develop an understanding of Science. (Aaliyah and Emily)

We can do this by reading texts about astronomy and the planets. (Wuri)

We can make models to show our learning. (David)

Where can you go for help?

You can go to a teacher or a trusted adult. Even sometimes you can go to a friend. (Thomas)