Learning Right Up Until the End!

For our last day together, we did personal research projects and began publishing our research in our "I learned/I wonder" books.  Here is a quick video:

Brianna found out that Great White Sharks can grow up to 20 feet.

She wasn't sure how long that was, so she measured it out with rulers.

It was a lot longer than she thought!

Then Ryan found the same fact, but 6 meters was what he heard and what stuck with him.  So we decided to compare the two lengths to see if they were about the same.  They gained some helpers along the way...

 We found out that 20 feet and 6 meters are about the same length.

 Brianna immediately went back and added her new learning to her "I learn/I wonder" book.

 What a great day of research!

However, we did end our day with a little entertainment:

I hope you all have a relaxing and wonderful holiday break!

Stop and leave us a post about what you're doing over break!  If you email me a picture, I will post it on the blog!

Going Public

We are putting the finishing touches on our space projects. Room 408 learned so much during our inquiry into space.

If you could choose a new topic to research, what would it be?

The Glass Artist, Chihuly

Today we studied the art of Dale Chihuly.
We began by predicting what material we thought Chihuly used in his sculptures.

We did a little research and found out the Chihuly used glass.  Many of us didn't know that glass could be melted and shaped.

To make our own Chihuly creations, we used plastic cups and colored them with Sharpie markers.  

Then we melted them in the toaster oven to create our own Chihuly-like creations.

Everyone got to watch their cup melt and called when to remove it from the oven to stop the melting.

Here is a video of us working on our cups, and then you can enjoy our final creations.  They are so beautiful!

What was your favorite part of the Chihuly project?

Going Public

Part of our LEADS inquiry stages of learning is to go public with our learning.  We gathered in small inquiry groups to figure out ways to share all the learning that we have done. Most decided to work on painted murals.

Fun in Room 408

We managed to get our November learning mural up within the first week of December.  You can see that space research was important to us this month, as well as our Charlie and the Chocolate Factory read aloud.  Can you spy the golden turkey token for our Play60 necklaces and the Prairie Trail where we did our Turkey Trot?

Jack's grandma came in for our monthly card-making activity:

We did further space research using the great website PebbleGo.  We kept track of lots of new learning! 

For Sharing during our Morning Meeting, Jacob made a delicious carrot cake to share.  He followed instructions from an illustrated cookbook and made it all by himself!  The response was overwhelmingly positive.  

We have also been working on our personal word wall words and taking them to "Word Power."

We love Play-Doh and Legos!

We use our ipads to take photos and email the proof of our work.

December Learning

I have to apologize for not posting in the past month. Report cards, conferences and the holiday season got the best of me! However, this didn't stop the learning in Room 408!

At LEADS we use the Next Generation Science Standards to guide our learning. For the past month we have been researching and studying space systems: the moon, our Earth, the sun, and our Solar System.

 We launched our unit by gathering resources and beginning our Space Book Clubs. We learned that our brains are like sponges, so first we did a Reading Frenzy to get as much space information into our brains as we could. Then we talked about how researchers keep track of their learning. We left tracks of our thinking by writing our new learning on sticky notes. Later, we learned to code our thinking: we put an "R" when we found learning that REMINDS us of something else, we put an "L" for new LEARNING, and a "W" for when we are WONDERING something. Here is a window into our space research for the past few weeks:



What is the most interesting fact you learned about your space research?