Otatara School - Ponga Class Term 1 2022
Spending time out in the bush reserve with the Ponga (Year 2) class we focused mainly on noticing and learning all about ferns. The 1st March after looking closely at some silver fern (Ponga) and wheki ponga fronds we set off to the reserve with Mrs Rodway - and we found so many different ferns. We had to use our eyes to spot the differences, becoming botanists as we learnt that there are over 200 types of ferns in NZ. We wondered how many were in the reserve? As well as the leaves of ferns being called fronds, we also learnt that the seeds are called spores. Great words to use. The 15th March Mrs Mac and the class were on a mission - for each student to find 3 leaves (not picked, but instead from the forest floor) - all different kinds and all different colours. As we wandered the class also shared their knowledge of ferns with Mrs Mac - and we discovered and made neuron connections as we shared. When we didn’t know we looked at a great book “Which Native Fern?” by Andrew Crowe, being introduced and using a KEY to work out which of the 200 species of fern it could be. Great learning for us all. Back in class the students grouped their leaves - by shape and colour and other ways - thinking about what might fit and not fit as the case may be. This made us all look very closely at the leaves. On the 29th March it was another opportunity to have the children/ tamariki share with Miss Nieborg their learning about ferns from the past visits to the bush. Their growing and developing knowledge was shared and grew even bigger today with great noticing of more types of ferns. We used our book again today to identify and name more ferns, and learnt how we can post pictures to iNaturalist to get other experts to help us. We saw a hanging spleenwort, a fern climbing a tree, and many other of the ferns found in the Otatara reserve. There was lots of scientific thinking and noticing as we compared fronds, where spores are found on the plant, and the feel and shapes of the ferns. Some fern fronds (pressed) from the Southland Community Nursery were left with the class for comparing and learning. The 12th of April our focus shifted away from ferns to other aspects of the bush world in the reserve. We met some other Otatara School classroom trees including tī kōuka/cabbage tree, mānuka, horopito, tarata and tōtara starting our noticing and comparing different tree species. We looked and described the bark and leaves and there were some great descriptive words used to distinguish between different species. We then explored the reserve finding something really interesting to sketch and coming up with three descriptive words to go with our drawings. Such great noticing and recording like a scientist!
Bronwyn
Posted: 12 April 2022