Coin Mini-Inquiry

We started looking closely at coins and noticing distinguishing properties of each coin. 

We immersed ourselves in coins today, but I'm excited to see what they notice and investigate further in the days to come!

Kid Bloggers!

Today we started experimenting with KidBlog, a safe classroom blogging site where kids can post their own learning and ideas and respond to their classmates' posts. They have all loved seeing and using our classroom blog and were so excited to post to their very own blog!

We will be sharing our blogs with family once we become more comfortable with it.  

It's a great way to provide an authentic audience....kids become creators of information, instead of just consumers!  

http://kidblog.org/why-kidblog/

Setting Up for Deeper Collaboration

Light & Sound is such a big topic that we spent a lot of time in the immersion phase exploring and doing experiments.  During the immersion phase, I try to help students be aware of the big ideas we need to cover in the NGSS so they can use and apply these ideas later in their smaller inquiry groups.  At the end of the immersion phase, we start gathering any questions that we still have about our current topic of study.

For our study of Light & Sound we sorted and categorized our lingering questions on our padlet wall, and ended up with this:

At the top of each sorted group I listed bigger questions, and at the bottom I listed possible topics of study for smaller inquiry groups.

Finally, I provided a ranking sheet so that students can have a choice in their topic for small group inquiry circles.  We can then easily divide each topic into smaller sub-inquiry groups, as needed.

Blake & Maddy will be studying how light behaves.

Logan S, Ryan,  and Kreed will be studying about how plants and animals use light or sound. 

Logan K, Austin, River, and Kyle will be researching different light sources. (2 sub-groups)

Alex and Makenna will be researching about color and light.

Brianna and Jack will be researching instruments and sound.

Erik and Jacob will be researching how people communicate with light and sound.

We'll need to start gathering resources on these final topics.  If you have ideas or suggestions for resources, please let me know!

Prepping for Nonfiction Writing

This week we started a mini/open inquiry in order to get ready to write some nonfiction chapter books.  Because we got to research a topic of choice, we started the mini inquiry by immersing ourselves in the nonfiction books in our library.  Once students found a topic, they gathered books about their topic in their basket and started looking through them.

 After they searched through their books for a while, they came up with a lingering question about their topic and we posted it on the learning clipboards in the back of the room.

Over the next two days we researched our topics by using a variety of book resources and apps (like Brainpop, Jr & Pebblego).  Students in Room 408 were so engaged as they gathered information about their topics.

Look at all our research!

Another Great Field Trip!

Today we went on a field trip that Mrs. Beyersdorf set up for us.  It was so cool to learn about all the jobs and work that is done at the Shawano County Highway Department.

You can come on the field trip with us by watching this video!

Learning from Characters

We continued our work that we started with Debbie Miller on learning about the characters in the books that we read.  We did some deep thinking, recording, and inferring today during Reading Workshop.

Logan inferred that Toby was a naughty dog because of the things he did in Always in Trouble.

Next up:  What lessons can we learn from the characters in the books we read?

Field Trip!

LEADS classes went to Green Bay to see the play Henry & Mudge at the Weidner Center.
We were surprised at how they changed the characters...we noticed a lot of differences between the books and the play.

We spent the afternoon at the Wildlife Sanctuary.

Ryan & Jack way up high!

Feeding the geese

Many geese were nesting, so we had to be careful.  No one lost any fingers, thankfully.

Speechless

Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I would be able to work with Debbie Miller in my own classroom! LEADS teachers were able to work closely with her to refine our teaching.

Debbie has written two of my most-referred-to books about teaching:

Room 408 was lucky to have her there during our Reading Workshop.  

Learning about characters from our books.

Mrs. Miller conferring with Erik about Chrysanthemum!

Yes, that's me conferring in the background behind Debbie Miller!

Celebrating Readers

 I learn so much from other teachers and collaborating with them.  What a great experience!

LtoR:  Me, Jennifer Zoll, Debbie Miller, Sarah Heins, Jen Burton, Kelley Swartz, Michelle Oss