The Junior Syndicate teachers posed a problem to the students: “What do we need to make our caterpillar garden grow strong?”

After brainstorming and coming up with some amazing answers the students wanted to know how they could tell that the caterpillar garden was getting enough water.

This led into our inquiry on rain gauges:

After looking at the attributes etc that a rain gauge has each group of students had to design their gauge; labelling the attributes and naming the equipment that they needed to make it. We used an excellent YouTube clip Suzy world – Rain and why it occurs and how to make a rain gauge. https://www.tvnz.co.nz/shows/home-learning-tv/episodes/sage-5-8-e4

Prior to this learning we had explored what a system was and looked at toasters and pop corn machines. They looked at attributes, the inputs and outputs and what transformation occurred. We used this knowledge to assist us with our rain gauge learning.

Students worked in groups of three to design their rain gauge.To be successful we had to teach specific measurement skills –how to use a ruler correctly, where to start our measurements from. For those who wanted to use more accurate measure we used a measure cup with 20 millilitres on it. They had to tip it into their rain gauges and measure each 20-millilitre increment.

We tested our rain gauges in the recent rain. The next challenge for students is to decide is how and where they are going to hang their rain gauge to collect rainwater.