Section 6 (cont.)

Year 5 / 6 Project

The science topic for Year 5/6 involved “Space and The Planets”  Ideas for  tasks for this class were taken from the resource “I.T. in Primary Science by Roger Frost”

The task was to find out how far each planet was from the sun and the size of each planet. 

This involves collecting data about planets using CD ROM resources.  The data was to be used to set up a database on the planets in the solar system. (Possibly using a spreadsheet) Children were split into groups and the class teacher explained to the children what data needed to be collected about planets.  One group at a time would work on the computer.

A suitable CD ROM based resource was needed in order to collect data and it was decided that Microsoft’s “Magic Schoolbus - Space” would be suitable for the task.

The group observed found collecting data about the planets very enjoyable, the children were able to search and extract the information required, although the class teacher intervened at times to prevent the children from being sidetracked.

Once the data had been written down, the children then started to input their data into “First Workshop”  The data was then checked and verified with help from the teacher.

Children were then asked to interrogate the database to find out some information using the search function.

Database information collected by children

Data sorted by size

Examples:

How far is Mars from the sun?

How big is Jupiter

Children then sorted their data into ascending and descending order of distance from the sun and size of the planets. The results were printed out as graphs.

Some other questions were set for the children to investigate using the graphical information.

Examples:

Saturn is _______ times bigger than the Earth.

Is there a relationship between size of the planet and distance from the sun?

Conclusions

The tasks used in this case study were designed to make information handling an enjoyable experience for both children and classroom teachers.  From evidence observed and feedback from staff later, I felt that this was a very successful exercise.  The children involved had enjoyed the activities and gained Information Handling skills in I.C.T.  Class teachers agreed that work of this type had given them a different perspective in the use of data handling.