"I can feel my brain getting bigger..." quote from Blake

In Writer's Workshop we have been writing stories from our life and talking about ways that we can make our stories "come to life."

We have also been working hard in math...we are estimating:

...we are doing surveys...

...and we are doing algebra on our ipads...

When we research, we are finishing up our "immersion" stage and soaking up new knowledge and collecting new learning on our class charts.

We are especially noticing how animals' bodies are specially made to help them survive.
We read the book Best Foot Forward which tells us about how feet are specially made to help animals survive.

What kind of body parts do these animals have that help them survive?

Animals, Animals, Animals

No, I'm not describing my class with that title.  :)  We just got a whole lot of animal research done today.  We are still in our immersion stage, where students read lots of animal books in Reading Workshop and leave tracks of their thinking.  We are also reading lots of animal books together to build our background knowledge.
We started out the morning by reading One Tiny Turtle by Nicola Davies.

They were surprised to find out that very few hatched turtles survive and actually make it back to the sea.  If you are interested in learning more about turtles like this, watch the video below.

We learned that when we leave tracks of our thinking, it's important to be clear so that we can remember our learning later...even after we remove it from the book!

We practiced being clear with our notes while reading One Tiny Turtle.

This afternoon we read the book What Do You Do When Something Wants to Eat You? by Steve Jenkins.

One of the big ideas of our animal inquiry in the Next Generation Science Standards is that animals have special parts of their bodies that help them survive.

Two of our favorites from the book were the bombardier beetle and the gliding tree frog.  Here are two videos to show more information.

What are you wondering about these animals?

BackChanneling

In New Mexico my inquiry instructor, Kristin Ziemke, taught me a lot about using technology with first graders.

She taught me about backchanneling and I decided to try it out with Room 408.  We used the site TodaysMeet and set up a safe chatroom for Room 408 to post our comments and thinking for all to read.

We started by greeting others and introducing ourselves as we logged into TodaysMeet (only students from Room 408 were in the chatroom).  Then we practiced what it will look like when we back channel while reading a book, by reading Just One Bite. (Thank you, Jen Burton!)

The book was full of interesting facts about life-sized bites of animals.  In response to the book, we posted our thinking on TodaysMeet for the whole class to see.  For the next month you can access our 'Just One Bite' TodaysMeet chatroom here.  The comments in the beginning were our practice greetings, next we posted our favorite color(s), and finally we posted our responses to the book. We practiced stretching out words so others can read our writing, and also got to read the thoughts and comments of others.  

What was your favorite thing about backchanneling?

Wonder of the Week

In order to get ourselves organized for our animal inquiry, we sorted the animal books in our classroom.  The researchers in Room 408 wanted to sort the books into categories such as land mammals, pets, reptiles, fish, etc.

However, there were some books that they couldn't figure out and categorize.  The books about slugs, snails, octopi, jellyfish, and worms really threw them into a "cognitive knot."  This turned into our "Wonder of the Week."

This is wonderful, as it has caused them to wonder and research more to find answers to their questions.

After researching today, we added our new learning and questions to our class chart.

Some came across a commonality that none of these animals have bones...I wonder what they will discover tomorrow? 

Can you think of any more animals that belong with this questionable group?

Piranhas & Subtraction

In math we are working on using what we know about addition to learn and think about subtraction.

We read the book Ten Sly Piranhas and the kids loved it.  It is a counting story in reverse about one piranha eating another until there is only one left.  We have been talking about how subtraction means that a part is missing.

If your child wants to enjoy the story again, watch the video below:

In doing some research, I found that piranhas are only found in South America.

Some piranhas are found in the Amazon River.

If your child wants to learn more about piranhas, s/he can watch the video below:

What are you wondering about piranhas?

Van Gogh Mini-Inquiry

Today we studied the painting by Van Gogh called The Starry Night.

We discussed what we liked about it, what we thought he painted with, and there was some disagreement about whether Van Gogh painted the sun or the moon in the upper right hand corner.
We watched a video of an interactive Starry Night painting, which showed the flow and movement of the lines in the painting (if the video below doesn't work, you can click on the link above):

Starry Night (interactive animation) from Petros Vrellis on Vimeo.

Here we are, hard at work!


What did you think of Van Gogh's Starry Night painting?

Greetings from New Mexico!

 I am learning so much here in Santa Fe...both about inquiry, as well as the culture of New Mexico.

I thought of you all today when Mrs. Heins and I went into an art store and saw glass art just like Chihuly!

This is what ALL the buildings here in Santa Fe look like:

Why do you think they are all like that?

It is very different here and beautiful in a different way than Wisconsin. 

See you on Tuesday and enjoy your long weekend!

Slow Sloths

We are starting the Immersion Phase with our Animal Inquiry.  This phase of inquiry is the time when we remember that our brains are like sponges, and we soak up as much new learning as we can.

Right now we are collecting cool facts that we are learning.  We are recording them on our padlet wall.  To view these facts, click here.

River's fact about sloths led us to read this book:

We learned that sloths are S--L--O--W.

Here is a video to demonstrate how slow sloths really are:

What questions do you have about sloths?

January Learning

Even though we have had days off of school because of snow and ice, we are still getting a lot of learning done...in fact, today Blake shared that our brains have grown so much since we started school this year!

When we got back from winter break, Maddy treated us to some venison.

We read about how Pa prepared venison in our current read aloud book, Little House in the Big Woods.

When we began reading Little House in the Big Woods, I showed them this picture and had them predict what they thought it was:

They finally realized what the above photo was when we got to this point in the book after the Ingalls family slaughtered a pig:

We spoke about how back then they didn't waste any part of the animals.  They were shocked to learn that the girls actually played with a blown-up pig bladder, just like a balloon.

Early January Mrs. Edwards came into our classroom to make math number bracelets with us.  Each bracelet has a given number of beads on it and it will help us with our number combinations to ten.

LEADS classrooms and teachers were also lucky enough to work with an inquiry educational consultant named Jen Burton.  She inspired students with higher-level thinking and inspired teachers with innovative teaching practices.

We learned about the strategy of inferring when we read.  We look for clues in the text or picture and use what we know to infer what the author means, even though the author didn't come right out and say it.

We practiced inferring meaning by reading the poem  Things by Eloise Greenfield.

We practiced inferring with nonfiction texts, too.

We left tracks of our thinking on post-it notes.

We worked really hard!

We are currently starting our next big inquiry on animals.  The first order of business was to sort and organize our classroom library books so that we can easily find the books we need.

We did a mini-inquiry to start thinking about how we could do this by sorting and exploring plastic animals and animal photo cards.

To top off our day, we made butter!  Many asked for the recipe...so here you go:
Fill a jar halfway with heavy whipping cream.  Screw on a tight-fitting lid.  Shake a lot until the butter forms in a ball.  Pour out the buttermilk that is left and rinse with cold water. Add salt, if desired.