Researcher Jacques Cousteau

 We did a mini-inquiry about Jacques Cousteau.

We started the day by making predictions on the Morning Message out what this object was:

We had lots of questions:

After making lots of predictions and inferences about the photograph, we reviewed different sources where we could research for more information.  We added photos to our list of learning resources.  We reviewed the big question for our inquiry:

For our Jacques Cousteau mini-inquiry, we would be using books, PebbleGo, and photos as resources.  We talked about how to record important information on post-it notes.  Then we went off to figure out why Jacques Cousteau was so famous!

Some started by investigating photos.  They found lots of great information: matching diagrams and photos of inventions and ships.  They were able to infer quite a bit about Jacques Cousteau!

Others got right into PebbleGo. We learned how to pause a video in order to write down important learning.

Some chose to research in books.

Regardless of what sources they were using, Room 408 was busy recording their new learning about Jacques Cousteau. We had so much new learning!  Our brains were like sponges!

We are proud of our research!

We even inferred that Jacques likes to wear a red hat!

We got together after our research time for sharing our discoveries.

We were amazed at how much learning we did!

Here are two great books about his life.

We learned that he had a hope and dream to be able to breathe underwater and to discover more about the undersea world that he loved so much. This dream sounded impossible, but he eventually invented the Aqualung!

He also bought an old war boat and turned it into an exploring ship, and named it Calypso.

He went on to invent other wonderful ways to explore under the sea.

Even though his dreams seemed impossible, he didn't give up until each one became a reality.

Later he realized that people were harming the ocean with garbage and chemicals.  Jacques Cousteau decided to educate the world so everyone could help to preserve the waters in our world.

Here are some videos, if you'd like to learn more about Jacques Cousteau.

Essentially we understood why Jacques Cousteau was famous...

What a great example of inquiry in action!

Reflecting on our Presentations

During each "Going Public" space presentation, we asked the audience to share their learning in the form of sticky notes. The audience posted their learning on a chart for each group.

 After we completed our presentations, it was interesting to reflect on the learning that we collected.

We loved teaching about our learning, and we're already looking forward to our animal inquiry!

Planning for the Go Public Stage

Now that we have organized our learning, we are ready to figure out who will be responsible for teaching specific big ideas that we have learned. We looked at our learning charts and each person picked a big idea to teach.
We wrote down our big teaching ideas to get ready to "go public."

Then we started making sure our posters would be good ways to teach and demonstrate our learning. We painted the big ideas on our posters.

 What great evidence of learning! At the beginning of our space inquiry, our sun was drawn in the typical way of a young child, but now it is complete with solar flares!

Setting Research Goals & Mr. Dombowski

Mrs. Dombrowski (our LEADS 4K teacher) invited her brother to help out in our 1st grade classroom for a few days this month.
We loved working with him!
During our space research, we set goals...

...and we coalesced all of our learning about space.  We talked about our learning and tried to group like learning together.

 Then, once our learning was organized, we drew circles around big ideas.

We are getting ready for the "Go Public" stage!