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?