Dervla Higgins, a teacher at St. Thomas More School in Sheffield, has recently enjoyed using Smart Science resources with Year 5 & 6 pupils whilst involved in the Smarter Schools initiative.
Hedgehog Crime Scene is one of the Smart Science resources which focuses on the skills of creativity and problem solving . The science investigative skill behind this activity is to encourage and enable children to make comparisons between pieces of evidence.
Dervla sets the scene with her pupils...
" I began the lesson with a short warm-up related to the key skills and got the children to jot down all the skills they used when they solved problems. I then moved on to set the scene by telling the story of Norman who was a fun-loving and adventurous hoglet who spent his days exploring my Dad's garden until one day he was found, flat on his back, dead!
Running the activity
The children were organised into teams and encouraged to work collaboratively to mind map all the possible causes of Norman's death, being creative but also realistic!
They used the zone of inference model to sort out ideas, so that they ended up with a couple of viable causes of death. The children came up with really unique and thought provoking possibilities.
After much discussion and acceptance of others opinions, the children realised that, with many problems, there is not just one specific 'answer' to the question and that we will never know for sure, how Norman actually died!
Extending their learning
The children in my class adored the hedgehog activity and as a result I extended the learning across the curriculum. In DT we made cornflake hedgehog buns, in RE we created epitaphs for Norman's gravestone and in science we made a hibernation fact file.
What we've gained as teachers...
- a more creative approach to teaching Science
- ideas on how to teach and embed the key skills for learning
- a class of eager young scientists!"
Dervla Higgins
St. Thomas More School
Sheffield