We have been thinking about numbers a lot in our time together. We work with numbers at our Number Corner, as well as during our Math Workshops.
Since it was our 14th day of school, we focused in on the number 14. We tried to come up with as many different ways to represent 14 as we could.
We came up with lots of different equations, tallies and pictures!
For Math Workshop we learned about part/part/whole mats.
We watched a video from our Math Coach, Mrs. Moeller, about using these mats to help us represent and solve problems in different ways. We paused the video every now and then to solve the problems on our own and then kept watching to check our work.
We have also been sharpening our estimation skills! We saw a picture of a jar with glittery balls in it and made a quick estimate of how many balls we thought were in the jar.
We found out there were 24 balls in the jar. After talking about reasonable estimates, we made estimates of other similar jars of balls, using what we learned about previous jars each time that we made a new estimate.
Based on what you learned about the first three jars in the picture above, can you make a reasonable estimate about how many balls are in the jar in the last picture?
Room 408 has done a few mini-inquiries to "get their feet wet" researching. These mini-inquiries have all been started and completed in one day's worth of Research Workshop. Our History of Thanksgiving inquiry spanned about 4 days of Research Workshops, so we get experience visiting a bigger topic, dealing with lingering questions, and following our personal questions as we research.
As usual, we started our Thanksgiving inquiry by sharing our schema (what we think we know). This is a time for brainstorming our schema, and we learn that it's okay to agree and disagree with each other.
It also sets us up to talk about finding evidence that confirms our thinking...
...or helps us to understand that sometimes we have misconceptions and have to delete that schema file from our brains and create a new file.
Brainstorming our schema also helps me figure out what types of resources I'll need to gather. As we brainstormed, it seemed that a lot of our History of Thanksgiving schema centered on questions about the Mayflower.
We studied a painting of the Mayflower on Google Classroom.
We studied a cutaway of the Mayflower to look for clues and learn more.
When we found something interesting, we highlighted it.
Some of us even compared the painting to our cutaway pictures.
Next, we visited the Scholastic First Thanksgiving site for a virtual tour of the Mayflower and to learn more about the journey of the pilgrims. Click on these words to visit the site.
As we learned something new, we would go back to our Mayflower cutaway and try to find it.
Over the next few days we immersed ourselves (the Immersion Stage) in all sorts of photographs, books, magazines, and videos. We learned that the Wampanoag were the native people that lived where the pilgrims landed. We were able to make connections between this and our Columbus/Indigenous People inquiry.
We coalesced our ideas. We noticed big ideas from our resources so far.
The next day we compared Pilgrim & Wampanoag life.
Here are some of our favorite videos:
Our Go Public Stage is when we teach others about what we learned. We made Story of the First Thanksgiving bracelets/necklaces to share with our families over break.
Today we did a mini-inquiry to determine what makes a living thing, a living thing.
First, we searched in books for clues as to how we know something is living or not.
Then, we got together and brainstormed our ideas. We had a great discussion--as each idea was shared, students showed if they agreed or disagreed by making signs, and then shared their thinking about why they disagreed or agreed.
This was our brainstormed list:
Everybody got a copy of that picture, and then used book sources or online sources to learn more about living and nonliving things.
We used Scholastic News...
...books...
...and the 'Living or Nonliving' article on PebbleGo.
Next, students marked each idea as confirmed (checkmark) or as a misconception (X) as they researched.
We met again for discussion and determined what it means to be 'living.'
We determined living things:
--need food/energy
--move
--need water
--breathe/need air
--grow/change
--can die
--have babies/reproduce
--go to the bathroom/give off waste
We were still a bit unsure about a few things...
Don't all living things need a place to live and grow? Don't all living things have functional parts to help them survive? Don't all living things have some kind of covering?
Some of us weren't convinced that plants could move on their own. Here are some videos showing plants growing, changing, and moving on their own:
Stay tuned for the rest of our Immersion Phase of our animal inquiry!
