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Our Science topic was the QCA unit on 'Rocks and Soils', so our next task was to compile a database of rocks. Of course they wanted to include pictures of their rocks. For this we used the Intel microscope to take photos of the magnified rocks.
We next looked at the pictures using the data projector. The children thought about the fields they would like to include, using knowledge gained from their previous experiments on the rocks. They suggested fields such as colour, texture, hardness and permeability. They set up their databases in pairs, using the drop down facility for multiple choice, to ensure that we were all using the same terminology.
Each pair made a record of one particular rock. They thought it was great fun 'moving on' (a kind of musical chairs) round the computer suite in order to input information on their rocks into each others' databases. They were able to import photos of the rocks into their records from the folder in the shared area, which was also good for consolidating their visual recognition skills. Following this, they were able to make graphs of different aspects of the database. The children's final task was to decide on the questions they wanted to ask other people to answer about fields in the database, and to set out their questions as search criteria.
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Chalk |
Granite |
Limestone |
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Marble |
Slate |
What's this? |
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