Wormbins

As a part of our unit on Identity and Values Year 5 students looked at the part played by famous Australians in developing who we are as a nation. The humour, the mate-ship, the easy going nature, the inventiveness and the patriotism  are all displayed in the characters that we have studied. As well as doctors who have made great advancement in research and development in the medical fields, the talented artists in all fields: authors, singers, painters and movie stars.

Exceptional work Elyse with two examples of Famous Australians

Our aim was to try and find things in nature that would float or sink. We floated all these boat creations to see if they would float or sink. They had to be able to hold a lego man.

We made our boat creations from bark, leaves, sticks, vines, reeds, palm leaves and seed pods.

We filled a tub with water and placed our creations carefully to test them. We tested them in three ways:

1. To see if they stayed afloat
2. To see if they could stay afloat in heavy winds
3. To see if they could stay afloat in strong wave action

We used a book to create the winds and we used our hand to stir the water and make the waves.

Our observation

Lisa’s boat made of paper bark and plain bark wrapped with leaves floated a long time and passed all three tests. Jessica’s, Alexis’s, Chenaya’s, Julian’s and Abby’s passed only two of the three tests. The rest sank immediately when placed in the water.

Our findings

We found bark’s not the best thing to use, leaves float well but when they fill with water they sink. Paper bark was the best to use because it is light and flexible, it had many layers which made it waterproof. It’s canoe like shape made it stable and harder for the water to get into. The curved design and the sides going up made it harder for the water to get in as well.

Fantastic work everyone on your Capital Cities projects. It was like I was watching TV commercials. I was expecting to see clear information and some pictures and but all the extra music, sounds and voiceovers made it really enjoyable to mark your homework.

• Courtney - fantastic voice over
• Tim - I can’t believe you found such great music on CCMixter
• Alexis - Such interesting facts
• Pheobe - AMAZING use of sounds from the Freesound Project

I’ve uploaded all the movie’s that I could. Remember just use your first name and you should be fine. Have a look at them below. They have all been given a Creative Commons License which means if someone likes your work then they can reuse but they have to attribute it to you and they can’t make money from it.