Inquiry: Farming

Our school planning says that we are going to learn about farming in New Zealand for Social Studies this term.

How could we learn this? The teacher could tell us, or we could become farmers, learning what we needed to along the way! Much more interesting!

Where could we start?
We discussed what a farm was, and decided a farm doesn't always need to have animals. Jigar thought that wheat might grow on a farm.

We went for a walk around the school, trying to identify possible locations for a farm.
Here are our first ideas. We needed to be able to justify our opinions.

We could make a farm by tearing down this eating place. It's quite a big space - Millie

We could make a farm on the roof. Plants could grow easier and they would be protected from people trying to take them out - Zak

The place where the Garden Club usually go (I forgot the name) could be for the big animals - Raynah
It has a gate so the animals couldn't get out - Ziggy

The bunny home is not realistic for the big animals but we could put little animals in here - Raynah

Could we make one of these places into a farm?

Let's start with the 'bunny home'. Mrs Leung asked Mrs Rogers to tell us more about the school rabbits.
We met Mrs Rogers at a secret location in the school (it wasn't so secret - it was at the rabbit run). She introduced us to Moonlight, the older rabbit. The other rabbit wouldn't come out to meet us.

We asked Mrs Rogers questions about the rabbits which we had written with a partner during writing time.

We found out that Mrs Rogers and the rabbit monitors have a problem.
Sometimes there is not enough long, fresh grass for the rabbits to eat.

I wonder...could we help to solve the problem? If so, how?