Students in Year 1 and 2 have been enjoying learning about some very abstract concepts this week. Volume and displacement are not easy concepts to grasp but expertly, our teachers have used picture story books and hands-on demonstrations and experiences to illustrate and explore them.
I joined a number of webex sessions this week where the focus of 'volume' was being explicitly taught and where modeled experiences supported the emerging knowledge of the children. Mr Archimedes Bath, a very well known picture story book by Pamela Ellen has been used by the teachers to introduce the concept of water displacement and how it relates to volume. A comical book but with serious mathematical and scientific underpinnings, the students were hooked into their learning.
The students were being supported to build their knowledge to measure how much space an object uses; how to prove that volume is not influenced by the weight of an object; how to compare and order the volume of different objects using displacement and to use findings to support their reasoning with words such as displacement, space and volume.
