Wow Learning

Every fact that the students find is such an a-ha moment. It is so exciting to see them discover learning.
They have found out cool facts such as the fact that our sun is only a small star, Pluto has been demoted to "dwarf planet" status, there is no gravity in space, the space shuttle is HUGE, and the moon reflects sunlight.

I shared these videos with them to get them thinking more deeply about how little we are in our world...



...how amazing our space exploration program is...


...zero gravity is so cool!

 Happy Researching!

Space Inquiry: Immersion Stage

Before starting any investigating in this big curricular inquiry, I explain the different inquiry stages that we will be going through.

In a nutshell:

Our brains are like sponges in the Immersion Stage.  We are soaking up any learning we can find. 
At the end of this stage, we think about lingering questions that we would like to answer.

We research to find answers to our questions in the Investigation Stage. 
Often we are grouped by interest in Research Groups at this stage.

In the Coalesce Stage we start organizing our thinking and research.

When we are in the Go Public Stage, we are sharing our learning with others and teaching our new schema.

We start the Immersion Stage with solely books.  As an introduction to our nonfiction text features unit in Reading Workshop, we talk about how when we are looking at books where the words are too challenging, the headings give us a clue to what each section is about.  As first grade readers, many of us need to infer using pictures and reading headings and captions for further clues.

This is definitely an exciting stage--many of the pictures didn't even turn out because the kids were moving so fast to share their learning with others!

The kids were in awe after this Introduction to Our Solar System video.

Our Space Schema

We have been gearing up all year to get ready for our big curricular Space Inquiry!  LEADS uses the Next Generation Science Standards (click here to visit the standards).

Our topic for this inquiry focuses on Patterns of Earth & Space Systems.

Many of our first graders and their families have already been observing the moon during the month of November.

Here are some pictures that Kenley's family sent--you can see how the moon is changing over time!

11 9 18 

11 13 18

11 15 18

11 19 18

As always, I like to hear about my first graders' schema (what they think they know) before starting any inquiry.  The easel has the chart with our first brainstorming session.  This primes the pump for students to think more deeply about what they know.

Next, we all had some quiet time to draw and label our own personal earth & space schema.

Here is a video showing our final earth & space schema papers.

Our learning and thinking will change over the next few weeks!

History of Thanksgiving Inquiry

Room 408 has done a few mini-inquiries to "get their feet wet" researching.  These mini-inquiries have all been started and completed in one day's worth of Research Workshop.  Our History of Thanksgiving inquiry spanned about 5 days of Research Workshops, so we get experience visiting a bigger topic, dealing with lingering questions, and following our personal questions as we research.

As usual, we started our Thanksgiving inquiry by sharing our schema (what we think we know).  This is a time for brainstorming our schema, and we learn that it's okay to agree and disagree with each other.  

It also sets us up to talk about finding evidence that confirms our thinking...

...or helps us to understand that sometimes we have misconceptions and have to delete that schema file from our brains and create a new file.

Brainstorming our schema also helps me figure out what types of resources I'll need to gather.  As we brainstormed, it seemed that a lot of our History of Thanksgiving  schema centered on the Mayflower.  

We studied a cutaway of the Mayflower to look for clues and learn more.

When we found something interesting, we highlighted it.

 We also made sure to read the labels.

Before we knew it, we were so excited that we couldn't help sharing our findings with others!

Next, we visited the Scholastic First Thanksgiving site for a virtual tour of the Mayflower and to learn more about the journey of the pilgrims. Click on these words to visit the site.

As we learned something new, we would go back to our Mayflower cutaway and try to find it.

Over the next few days we immersed ourselves (the Immersion Stage) in all sorts of  photographs, books, magazines, and videos about the first Thanksgiving.

About halfway through the inquiry, we discussed the lingering questions that we had.  They were wondering things like:
How did they get to the shore?
Where did they land?
What kinds of foods did they have?
Who were the Wampanoags?
Why did so many of the pilgrims die?
What was the first Thanksgiving like?
Were there people living there already?

During the Investigation Stage, they pursued answers to their lingering questions.

During the Coalesce Stage we had a lot of discussions about our thinking and were able to confirm our thinking by finding evidence in videos and books.

Here are some of our favorite videos:

Our Go Public Stage is when we teach others about what we learned.  We made Story of the First Thanksgiving bracelets/necklaces to share with our families over Thanksgiving Break.

We were proud of our bracelets and necklaces!

Happy Thanksgiving!