Year 1 IPC: Becoming Brain Scientists!

What an exciting start to our new IPC unit, Brainwave!  Year 1 transformed into a team of curious brain scientists over the last two weeks, ready to investigate one very important question: How does our amazing brain help us learn?

To launch the unit, the children rotated around a series of hands-on investigation stations. Rather than simply being told how the brain works, they were encouraged to experience, notice, question and discover for themselves.

🧪 MYESTERY TASTE

Can our brains work out what we are eating?

Our scientists put their senses to the test! Children tasted mystery foods while closing their eyes and pinching their noses before trying them again using their sense of smell. There were lots of surprised faces as they discovered that identifying a food was much trickier when their brain had less sensory information to work with. Peter said "I'm sure this is a cucumber" and when his blindfold was removed, he couldn't believe he had actually been eating a tomato!!

The children began to discover that our brains combine information from different senses to help us understand the world around us.

🧩 CONFUSING INSTRUCTIONS

Can our brains stop an automatic response?

This station certainly got the children's brains working hard! Children first responded to action cards such as clap, stomp and touch your head. Then came the twist: they had to ignore what they could see and follow a completely different spoken instruction! The children were particularly interested to see whether practising made the challenge easier.

🏗️ CUP TOWER CHALLENGE

Does changing our approach help?

With just six cups and 60 seconds, our little scientists were challenged to build the tallest tower they could. After their first attempt, they reflected on what worked, what didn't and what they might change before trying again. Ragnar encouraged his team and said "let's work together to make it taller, we can find a new way!"

This introduced some powerful language that we will continue to develop throughout the year: to be able to plan, monitor and evaluate their learning. The children discovered that to be a successful learner you don't always get things right the first time, you notice what is happening, adapt your approach and try again.

🧠 MEMORY DETECTIVES

Finally, our scientists became memory detectives! Children studied sequences of pictures before trying to identify missing objects and recreate the correct order.

They then explored different ways of helping their brains remember, including saying the pictures aloud, looking carefully from left to right, pointing and creating a story. Most importantly, the children began thinking about which strategy helped them and why.

It has been a start to the Year 1's IPC journey with classrooms filled with curiosity, laughter, discussion and thoughtful questions. Children are already beginning to understand that learning isn't only about what we know — it is also about understanding how we learn.

By Mumbi Mulenga

Year 1 Leader, Jaguars Class Teacher

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