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?

Our Busy Social Calendar

First graders in Room 408 track the temperature and observe the skies every day after we come in from recess.  We record our information on our personal calendars and on our skies graph.  We also currently keep track of the daily weather above our number line (it's a color-coded dot based on the temperature around noon when we record our temperature observation).  We started the year out with lots of temperatures in the orange and yellow dots, and have slowly moved into the green dots.  We recently had our first blue dots.  The kids were excited to have a new color, but I have a feeling we're in for a lot of blue and purple temperature dots this winter.  They are very aware of the weather.  In fact, today kids were reminding each other to wear their coats outside because "it's only 43 degrees out and the 'feels like' temperature is only 36!"

We now have a timeline along our number line in our classroom.  We brainstormed the things we have learned together in September and October.  Kids then signed up to help create representations of our learning to add to our monthly murals along the timeline/number line.  We are very proud of our finished murals! (can you find Philippe Petit walking between the Twin Towers and Albert Einstein?)

 You can see that September happened on our number line from days 1-20 of school.

October took place from day 21-44 of school.  Can you find Jane Goodall and James being pulled by the seagulls attached to the giant peach?

We also had a presentation from our local K-9 unit, and they came in with their German Shepherd named Getty. 

The kids were great listeners.

Makenna, who has been working on a German Shepherds book in Writing Workshop, was in heaven.

Getty

This week we also had our Family Math Night.  Families explored math activities in our classroom and then headed over to Mrs. Zoll's classroom for help with technology.
Finally, Logan S. presented our We Love First Grade book at the LEADS School Board Meeting. He did a great job!

....and it's only Wednesday!

What was your favorite part about working on the September and October murals?

Two Months Under Our Belts

Today we added details to the timeline in our classroom.  We brainstormed things we did together in the months of September and October, and then visited the blog to add even more ideas to our brainstorm.  Students chose from our list of ideas to add to a September mural and an October mural that we added to our timeline.

They loved our Plan, Do, Review project time this morning!
This afternoon we worked with our rekenreks to record combinations to ten.



Can you name a combination that makes ten?

Literacy Fun Fair

On the day of the Literacy Fun Fair, we had to have a substitute teacher: Miss Viola Swamp.  I'm sorry to say, she was the meanest substitute in the world.

If you want to enjoy the book Miss Nelson is Missing again, watch this video:  

We got together with our LEADS buddies to make videos with our ipads.  Each buddy recorded the other talking about their book character and their book.

LEADS K-2nd grade students got together for a shared reading of The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything.  

In the afternoon we worked with Mrs. Zoll's second graders and went to stations and ended the day with some treats!

Thinkers

This week our focus was how readers think while they read and scientists think while they research.  We left tracks of our thinking on post-it notes in books we read during Reader's Workshop.  Then we transferred our learning to leaving tracks of our thinking on post-it notes in the form of questions and observations while researching horseshoe crabs.

We had some good discussion while reading the book Crab Moon:

Then we watched the following youtube videos to to some research:
 

Room 408 had lots of questions and observations about horseshoe crabs, so we left tracks of our thinking on post-its.

We added our questions and observations to our Wonder Window:

Many kids were wondering about the body of the horseshoe crab and where the head is.  That will be our Wonder of the Week that we post on our classroom door.  Throughout the week kids will make hypotheses about the body of the horseshoe crab.  Later in the week we will discuss how we use sources to find information and research more about the body of the horseshoe crab.

After watching the video again, do you have any other wonders about the horseshoe crab?

Maniac Monday!

We have a whole lot of things to share from Room 408 this week!
We are practicing counting by 5s and 2s, as well as noticing even and odd numbers.

Our current research is Shrunken Apple Heads and how they are changing.

Step 1:  We used the apple peeler to peel apples.

Step 2:  Then we carved out a face.  

Step 3:  Then, we dipped it in a lemon juice and salt mixture.

Step 4:  Finally, we put it on a stick.

We are waiting to see how they change as they sit out over the next week or so.  We had a lot of delicious fun doing this experiment, as you can see from our Apple Movie:

This morning Erik brought in a fruit for our Discovery Table.

We decided to do some research and figure out what this fruit was.  The kids used their ipads to read the QR codes that would bring them to an online glossary of fruits and vegetables.

After some research, students think they have found a few likely matches.  

Have you ever seen a fruit like this?  Where?  Some of us think we saw it at Charlie's County Market, but it was not for eating.