Literacy Fun Fest

 We had a Literacy Fun Fest and dressed up as our favorite book characters!

One Fish

Clifford, the Big Red Dog

Green Bay Packer

Elsa

Snow White

The Mandelorian

Ghostbuster

Unicorn

Zuma from Paw Patrol

Cat

Pigeon

Beetle

Zara-corn

Pirate

Even I joined in as Jane Goodall from Me...Jane!

We shared our books with each other and enjoyed hearing about each other's characters.

Hope you had a great weekend!

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!

Our First Inquiry!

  We have been learning about the life of the researcher, Jane Goodall.

For our first inquiry, we started wondering about Jane by looking at some photographs.

We started to have lots of questions.

We started thinking about how we can learn from various sources. Some great ways to learn are through photographs, PebbleGo, and books. Each of us started learning about Jane by choosing how we were going to start our own research.

Declan, Delilah, and Braxton comparing research of similar findings.

They were so excited to have all found information about Jane's chimpanzee stuffed animal!

Kendrick is recording his research off of PebbleGo.

Braxton found out that she lived in a tent.

Mason found the same thing in a National Geographic magazine!

Piper is being told that she can confirm her prediction that she thought she liked animals, because Braxton found a magazine cover that said, "Animal Scientist and Activist."

Franklin is focused in his research.

Asher recorded so much research, his clipboard is full!

Delilah and Mason are comparing information across lots of print sources.

So many great conversations happen as they share their research with each other.

We got together as a big group to share and compare our findings about Jane.

Everyone was so proud of all our hard work as researchers!

We then read the book The Watcher, which told us more about how Jane accomplished her dream to work and study with chimpanzees in Gombe, Africa.  We also got some of our questions answered!

Jane was not only a researcher, but also a writer.  She kept piles and piles of research in her tent when she was working with the chimpanzees.

We learned that one of her favorite chimp companions was named David Greybeard.

However, after many years Jane realized that the chimpanzees she loved were in danger of becoming extinct.  She realized that the best way to help the chimpanzees was to share their story with the world.

Jane Goodall is an excellent example of the 3 A's:  Activism, Awareness, and Aid.  When we do our inquiries this year, Room 408 will keep these 3 A's in mind.

This is a National Geographic video that we watched so we could see Jane in action:

What inspires you about Jane Goodall?

Setting Reading Goals

We have been working on building our reading stamina.  We read the book Marathon Mouse by Amy Dixon.

Preston was a mouse who wanted to run the New York City marathon but no one thought he could do it.  We googled the NYC marathon so we could see how challenging it would be for a mouse.

Would you like to be a mouse running amid a sea of sneakers?

He worked hard, practiced, and got stronger as a runner.  He finally completed his marathon!

Room 408 talked about how we can build our reading stamina just like Preston built his running stamina.  We set goals for ourselves and stacked our books on one side of our folder, and as we finished a book we placed it on the other side and became marathon readers!

We read for almost 30 minutes straight!

Happy reading!