Social Science Inquiry Term Two

"Whaowhia te kete mātauranga""

Fill the basket of knowledge

Term 2 Inquiry Hook Letter

Hook

Mr Bron has written to us asking us to help come up with a presentation for the community for Matariki night.

We need to learn about the ecology and the historical significance of the eels and the Tiritea Pa, which are both located on the other side of the Manawatū River.

We have a lot to do to be able to make a quality presentation for the parents. We need to get to work straight away!

The Eels in the Tirtea Stream

The Lookout at Tiritea Pā

View to Ahimate Park

Wonder

The first thing we do in any Inquiry is take some time to think about what we already know and discuss what we need to find out.

We decided to do a T chart organiser to help record our knowledge, thoughts and ideas.

We found out what we collectively know about the eels and the Pa and it helped us think about who we can ask for help with.

Explore

We decided there are three different components to this Inquiry. We need to learn more about:

Eels
Tiritea Pā
What makes a 'great' presentation

The teachers decided that they would each take one of these three aspects and help us learn about it. We are going to rotate through the different teachers so we get to know a bit about everything. We can't wait to get started.

Explore - What Makes a 'GREAT' Presentation

With Mrs Lunn, we thought about ways we could communicate with the Riverdale community. We also thought about WHAT exactly we wanted to communicate. We needed to record our ideas on a brainstorming sheet...

We googled "What makes a good presentation?" and this is the list that came up:

Consider your audience
Make eye contact
Use visuals
Connect with your audience
Introducing your presentation
Keep your slides short
Storytelling
Language
Use your voice
Audience engagement
Conclusion
Multimedia
Start Strong
Tell stories
Call to action
Effective delivery
Animation
CLEAR goals
Clear structure
Demonstration
Information
Introduction

It's A LOT! We wondered if we could narrow it down to a few key ideas so it's time to watch a few videos and see which ones feature the most

Example 1

Example 2

Example 3

Here's our shortened list of what we think we need to include in our presentation...

We looked at the components of what makes a good presentation. We looked at videos and photos of people presenting their knowledge to others. We brainstormed our ideas of what were the positive and negative aspects of each presentation. We then went through the positives and decided how important we thought they were. Were they a MUST include in our presentation?

Take a look at the different presentations we critiqued:

Example 4

Example 5

Māori Pā

Click on the following link

What is a Pā?

Answer the questions you have been given and label the diagram.

Explore - All about Eels

We needed to learn all about eels. We watched some videos to see if we could find some facts about eels in New Zealand. Auckland Zoo had a great video and we found lots of interesting information.

We listened to the video carefully

We learned about the life cylce

Reflect

We worked together to determine the success criteria for our video presentation. Here's what we came up with:

Act

On Thursday we went on a visit to the Urban Eels and the Turitea Pā. Matua Charlie and Mr Ruawai came with us.

They told us about the eels and how they were significant to Māori. Tuna (eels) were a main source of food for Māori living along the banks of the Manawatū River and the neighbouring Oroua River.

We also walked up to the newly built lookout at the sight of the old Turitea Pā. We learnt that this is where Rangitāne invited the Ngāti Ūpopiri and the Paneri people to live in the 1800s. They used to live on the other side of the river but they were in danger of being attacked by other tribes.