The primary EI team recently enjoyed a day delivering CPD to two Year 5 teachers, Matthew and Lin, at St George’s Church of England Primary school. This was followed by an Epistemic Insight workshop for each of their Year 5 classes.
The children engaged wonderfully with the workshop, providing lots of interesting responses and insights to our questions within the activities. They seemed to particularly enjoy the Titanic activity where we asked the question “Why did the Titanic sink?” Firstly, students became scientists, investigating the design of the ship and how it sank through making predictions. These were then tested out via a practical experiment to flood a model Titanic. Lots of water was spilled and lots of paper towels were needed! Students also made some very interesting observations. The activity aimed to develop their scientific inquiry by highlighting the methods of prediction, testing and observation.
Students were next set the challenge of deciding who was to blame for the Titanic sinking; adopting the role of historian. Through role play, they became the characters on the Titanic; which resulted in several passionate debates concerning who was blame. This activity focused the students on historic investigation through a range of different sources such as US and British newspapers and individual testimonies.
After these activities, we revisited the question “Why did the Titanic sink?”. This question was now met with both scientific and historic arguments and the students generally agreed that investigating this question through two subject disciplines made them better informed (and consequently able to answer the question more fully than before).
It is hoped that through working on our fun activities, the children have gained an insight into how they can answer other questions they meet in school through the lens of multiple subject disciplines.
If you are interested in joining our project and would like us to run some free workshops for primary aged pupils in your school, please contact us on lasar@canterbury.ac.uk
Image of the Titanic via Wiki Commons
Second image via Unsplash