Supplementary Inquiry Team

I am part of the Topic supplementary inquiry team at my school.   We are focusing on improving the teaching of Social Sciences, Technology and Science.  In Term 2 our focus has been on Technology and the Year 2 team has been focusing on making a rain hat from recycled materials.
These are the hats the groups in my class have been making:

I like the way they are all so different.  

 The team has been looking at the skills we would like our children to have in technology, based on the "indicators of progressions by level" technology document.  We decided on:
Identify (plan, test)

Explain (explore, research)

Describe (explore)

Evaluate (compare/contrast).

We looked at our planning to work out how we could plan experiences that would develop these skills, and discussed how we would assess these skills.
While it would have been good to spend more time on the rain hat project I felt that my class successfully used the materials to create a prototype.  They loved having some freedom to explore the materials and refine their projects as they went.  Next time I would probably spend more time talking about how to identify what worked and what didn't work, and how to make constructive changes.

Testing the rain hats on a rainy day.