Immersing Ourselves in Sound & Light

We began our study of sound and light sooner than I anticipated.  Last week the kids started debating about what was faster, sound or light?  I wanted to take advantage of the excitement and get going as soon as possible!

When the kids came into the classroom this week they were surprised to find that the windows had been covered with black paper.  How can we study light without a dark room?

We started by talking about our schema about light and sound.  We began creating our Wonder Wall:
click here to view our Padlet Wonder Wall

Our brains are like sponges in the Immersion Stage.  In this video we are seeing what we can find out about sound and light by playing around with objects and exploring.

We also took time to record some of our thinking so far, representing our learning with diagrams and words.

We also watched the following videos to make observations about light and sound.




We will also start using some new words to describe light:

Transparent

Translucent

Opaque

What can you observe about light and sound?

Still "Going Public" with Mrs. Oss's 4K!

Today we had Mrs. Oss's 4K students do a Gallery Walk with our animal research.  We stood by our posters and answered questions.

These 4K LEADS learners even brought their clipboards so they could represent some learning and interesting facts!

Thanks for letting us share our learning with your class, Mrs. Oss!

Getting Published

For the past few weeks we have been working hard to publish our favorite piece of writing.  We spread out all our pieces and tried to pick the one that we liked so much we knew we could make it *even* better.

Our class has been so serious while we work on our publishing.  You can feel the excitement in the air!

We spent time revising and editing.  We revised to choose stronger words and use some craft, like similes and personification, that we noticed authors using.  We also revised our beginnings and endings.  Finally, we edited to make sure we remembered capital letters, ending punctuation, and word wall words.

After revising and editing, we went through some phases of publishing.  We illustrated our pages to make sure that our pictures matched our words.

We have been noticing how other authors made words "pop out" of the page by making them look special.  We decided to do the same thing.

We created our title pages, dedication pages, and even wrote a "blurb" on the back of our book. We used the Croakit app to record our names, titles, and blurbs so that our readers can scan a QR code to hear the author tell about the book!  

Listen to a sample below:

 We can't wait to share our bound books with everyone at the Exploration Celebration on April 10th!

Our Animal Inquiry Journey

This past month has been filled with preparing to share our animal research.

We formed small inquiry groups in our Investigation Stage and became specialists on specific animals.  We gathered lots of resources on our specific animal and started collecting and recording information.

Using print resources

Using digital resources

These researchers learned that crocodiles and alligators have eyes near the top of their head so they can hide under water but still see above water. They are testing our their new learning with models of their animals.

After we gathered lots of research, we started synthesizing our ideas in the Coalesce Stage and began planning out how we would share our learning with others.  This was when we sorted our learning on our I Learned/I Wonder t-charts and started thinking about the "Big Ideas" about our animal.

What pieces of learning go together?

At the end of the Coalesce Stage, we started creating murals.  These murals included a large representation of our animal in its habitat, with details, labels, and fun facts.

Here is a video taking you through our Investigation & Coalesce Stages, where we gathered lots of new learning and wonders and started to plan out how we would share our learning:

Yesterday and today we "went public" with our learning. We shared our research and taught LEADS kindergarteners and second graders about our animals. The LEADS 4K students are even planning to come up and do a gallery walk of our murals, where we'll be available to answer questions.

sharing our research

answering questions

turning and talking about our new learning

adding new learning and wonders to their chart

Enjoy our Go Public Stage by watching the video below!

What will we research next?
A special thank you goes out to Jen Burton, Kristin Ziemke, Stephanie Harvey, Smokey Daniels, Debbie Miller for being so inspirational in this Inquiry & Collaboration process!

Alone in the Wilderness

Our current read aloud book is Little House on the Prairie.

We just finished the part where Pa builds the log cabin, and they noticed how it was a lot like Lincoln Logs.


I shared the story of Dick Proenneke's life, and how he had a dream of living off the land in the Alaskan wilderness.  He built his cabin from scratch using nothing but hand tools, just like Pa!


As we watched the DVD, we found out that he was a writer (he kept a journal of his adventures) and a mathematician (he used lots of measuring tools to build his cabin).
Here are some highlights of the DVD:

 To learn more about Dick Proenneke, click here and here.

We pulled out our class Lincoln Logs and tried our hand at building.

What did you like about the Dick Proenneke DVD?

100 Days Have Come and Gone...

Today was our 100th day of school!  Here is a video of our 100th day activities:

We read the book Wolf's Chicken Stew by Keiko Kasza.  The wolf wants to make chicken stew and each day he leaves 100 treats on the chicken's front porch in order to fatten her up.  However, he finds out that he has been feeding 100 hungry chicks all week!  The book ends with the wolf baking 100 scrumptious cookies for them...

We found a special gift left on the doorstep of Room 408...

...along with a note!

At first we didn't believe that there were really 100 cookies...we decided to group them in fives and figured out that we would need 20 plates.

We ended up with 4 extra plates, so we delivered them to the office and the specials teachers.

On a different note, our gecko is getting extra active!

What does the number 100 mean to you?

Adoptions

 Room 408's classroom family is growing!  We have now adopted a gecko, some fish, snails, and shrimp for our research:

Our gecko has been in hiding.  It causes quite a stir when he moves a leg.

Our fish tank holds some small fish, two snails, and some shrimp.

Upon first observing the shrimp I heard, "Cool! You can see his brain!"

Can you see the see-through shrimp at the base of the green plant?

Our betta is beautiful, although his water needs to be changed already!

The students have been making observations all day in our pet research journals.

Here are some of their observations:

What do you think we should name our pets?