Mrs. Henning is Stuck in Washington DC!

 My husband, daughter and I went to visit our son CJ who is in the Air Force on our long weekend. 

Unfortunately our flight back home on Sunday was canceled and we couldn't return until Tuesday! We took the opportunity to do some more sightseeing in Washington DC, but I had to get a substitute teacher.

Room 408 did some research on what I might be doing in Washington DC. Here are some things they researched:

The White House

The Washington Monument

The Lincoln Memorial

Abraham Lincoln

The Capitol (Do you see it in the background of the Washington Monument?)

I was even able to get a picture of a famous site that we will research in January....do you know who made a famous speech in this place?

Starting Genius Hour

 After we came up with wonders about our world for our Wonder Window...

...we decided on topics that we were really interested in. 

We each came up with a wonder that we could stick with. Here are a few!

Delilah is wondering about robots.

Thatcher is wondering about spiders.

Erika is wondering how clothes are made.

Quill is wondering about presidents.

Next we got to work and used sources like PebbleGo, books, and youtube videos to learn more about our topics.

Braxton was wondering about teachers. He put together some questions to interview an expert...he  interviewed me!

We wrote down any interesting facts that we learned about our topics.

When we were finished we recorded three of our favorite facts.

Our next step will be to create some kind of project to help us teach others about what we learned!

Personal Word Walls

 Each child in Room 408 has a Personal Word Wall filled with words we need to know in a "snap."

Words that each child can spell in a "snap" are highlighted on their Personal Word Wall.

A few times a week the student chooses a word to work on that is not highlighted.  S/he makes the word in a variety of ways in hopes of learning the word so s/he can access it in a "snap" when s/he is reading or writing.

Lydia makes 'like' with Wikki Stix.

Delilah makes 'I'm' with shells.

Asher checks his personal word wall to make sure he records 'before' correctly.

Mason makes 'on' with beans.

Quill makes 'we' with dominoes.

Thatcher makes 'have' with legos.

Declan uses the Word Wizard app to work on 'because.'

Then we take pictures to document our hard work.

The next morning 100% of the class could remember and spell their snap word correctly. Great job, Room 408! 🎉

We loved our Word Study time!

Domino Fun

 We will be using dominoes to help us focus on our math facts for the next few weeks.  We learned the traditional Dominoes game.

We are also learning how to be good sports.

Good game!

Wonder Wednesday!

 This week our wonder was about our skeletons.

Each week we record our thinking in our Think Books. We shared our thinking with partners.

Many of us predicted that our bodies would be like jelly if we had no bones. We also learned a lot about our bodies and how they can move.

We are looking forward to doing a project about our bones on Friday!

Happy Wonder Wednesday!

Owl Inquiry Day!

We have had lots of wonders about owls, porcupines, mice, and owl pellets as we read aloud Poppy, our chapter book by Avi.

Since we had so many wonders and questions, we had an Owl Inquiry Day!

Room 408 loves Research Workshop! We started by brainstorming lingering questions we had about owls:

We reviewed all our sources and started our research by studying photos, reading books, or researching on our ipads on PebbleGo and Epic.

We also explored an owl skull...

...and weighed owl pellets on a balance.

We made connections and collaborated about our learning.

Of course, we always recorded our new learning!

We gathered together to share our learning and answer our questions.

Finally, the time came that we have all been waiting for: dissecting owl pellets! We found it morbidly fascinating.

We found lots of cool bones inside, along with a *lot* of fur.

When we found a bone, we used a diagram to help us identify what kind of bone it was and what kind of animal it came from:

The owl inquiry has been one of our favorite days, so far!🦉