Antarctica Field Trip!

This week our math lessons have focused on measurement through an imaginary field trip to Antarctica.  First of course, we had to measure ourselves for snowsuits.  We sorted our heights into three different ranges:  less than 40 inches, 40-50 inches, and greater than 50 inches.

Our first investigation was about Rockhopper penguins.  We searched for and highlighted specific information in a poem.

Then we compared our heights with the heights of Rockhopper penguins.  We recorded our data in our Think Books and included a string that was as long as a Rockhopper penguin.  We were surprised about how small they are!

We looked up images of Rockhopper penguins.  They are so cute (and a little funny-looking)!

We wanted to see these penguins in action, so we watched the following video with Rockhopper penguin questions in mind:

What are you still wondering about Rockhopper Penguins?

Visualizing!

Room 408 has been working on visualizing as we read to understand more deeply.  We read Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg.

The kids loved this book and you could hear a pin drop as they were sketching what they visualized.

We stopped to sketch our visualizations after the main characters found the Jumanji game, after set up the game to play, and after events such as the lion chased Peter through the house, when the monsoon season hit, the rhino stampede, and when the monkeys tore apart the kitchen.

We realized that our visualizations are affected by the schema we have.  For example, when visualizing the Jumanjji game board we could tell when someone had schema about games like Monopoly or Candyland based on how they drew the game board.  Can you see the game boards in the work below and how schema is different?

We also compared our visualizations to each other's work and noticed how our schema is different from our talking partner's schema.

Enjoy our visualization in the following video!

Learning Mural Day!

We got to work on the April learning mural this week.  We had quite a big list of things we did to get smarter, even though Spring Break was included in this month.

We did lots of teamwork and practiced our collaboration skills as we represented our learning.

Jorel & Cooper worked on the Exploration Celebration

Breleigh & Jacob worked on representing Jacob's Ethiopia presentation

Tela & Rylee worked on representing our inferring work with our books about hippos George and Martha 

Jill & Drew worked on our read aloud book, Poppy

Andrew & Ellie worked on representing our mini-inquiry on Georgia O'Keeffe

Grant & Dane represented our math work with place value

Aaron & Robin represented our new collaboration ideas from playing Uno

Teagan & Sophia worked on our reminder about behavior with guest teachers

Here is the final product!

Pumpkin Planting

Every year first graders get to plant pumpkin seeds, courtesy of 4-H.  The idea is that we start them now so that they may be entered in the county fair in fall.

I wonder how big our pumpkins will be by September?

Numbers

We are getting ready for second grade and thinking about numbers in new ways.  We can take numbers apart into hundreds, tens, and ones and represent them with symbols.

We're getting smarter every day!

Jacob's Cultural Presentation

Jacob and his family came into the classroom and shared information about where Jacob was born--Ethiopia.  We learned a lot about the culture and customs.  Jacob was so proud of his heritage and we learned so much.

We even got to eat some popcorn, one of the traditional foods.

 One of the things I enjoyed most was being able to see Jacob as a baby!

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Thank you for sharing your culture with us, Jacob!

Exploration Celebration!

Thank you to all LEADS families who were able to make it out to our Exploration Celebration.  It was a great evening filled with projects, families, songs, and smiles.

 We were most excited about our actual size animal murals.  They were quite impressive after they were posted on the walls!

Grant, Andrew and Dane with their teenage giraffe

Ellie and Tela with their chameleon and komodo dragon

Sophia (and Robin) and their polar bear

Cooper, Lily and Rylee with their red kangaroo

Breleigh and Aaron with their endangered wolf

Teagan and Anderson with their tropical birds

Jill and Drew with their box jellyfish

Jacob and Jorel with their lion

All of our music for the evening was centered around taking care of our Earth.

 What a wonderful evening!

We were so proud of all our hard work this year and were excited to share it with you.