Finishing Up!

We finished up our Word Detective unit in Reading Workshop and our Teaching Books unit in Writing Workshop.

At the end of our Word Detective unit we pieced together a secret message.  We followed the clue in the secret message, which let to a Top Secret envelope outside our classroom!  There was a Nate the Great book inside.  We put our Story Detective skills to use as we read and solved the mystery...

We loved our Word Detective unit!  Now we're ready to put our skills to the test in our animal inquiry!

Gavin's Cool Clock

Since we are studying time right now, Gavin brought in a very cool transparent clock so we could see the gears working.
He shared that the main gear is called the 'Sun Gear' and the other gears are called 'Planetary Gears.'  That is perfect, since we recently completed our space inquiry!

Thank you for sharing, Gavin!

Tens Family Weddings

Each day we are "attending" a wedding from the tens family....understanding that it is helpful to know and understand how certain numbers always go together in the tens family.
We were invited to weddings in the tens family:

 We started with our wedding march:
  We celebrated as our first pair, 5&5 were joined together.

We even got wedding gifts representing 5+5=10!

I'm hoping to help these tens pairs get fixed into the minds of our first graders.
The next day, we celebrated the union of 8 & 2!
I found these flashing numbers candles to help us remember the pair of 8 & 2:

The wedding present was either a blueberry muffin, or a banana cinnamon muffin.  Yummy!

I wonder who will be joined in holy matrimony tomorrow?!?

February Learning Mural

Who out there is shocked that it is already March!
We missed five days of learning in the already short month of February due to cold, snow, and ice.  However, we were shocked to see that we learned so much in 14 short days!

We almost ran out of room when we were reflecting on our February learning!

Here we are, collaborating to work on projects that represent our February learning.

What should we work on next?

We love working on our learning murals!

Happy Learning!

Sharing

I love our class sharing time during our morning meeting.  Many times we learn about each other's interests.
Mason was pretty excited to teach us about the Edmund Fitzgerald, and shared his favorite song with us.  He even built a lego model of the Edmund Fitzgerald.



Gavin shared his favorite song by Ted Nugent and information about Nugent's friend, Fred Bear.  Gavin told us that he sings this song before he goes hunting each year.

Word Detective Training is Complete!

We completed our word detective training missions and earned our badges!  We were very excited.

Way to go, Room 408!

Ruby Bridges Mini-Inquiry

After our study about various civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr and Harriet Tubman, Room 408 did a mini-inquiry about Ruby Bridges.
Because it was a mini-inquiry, that meant that we would go through all of the inquiry stages in a short period of time.
For our Immersion Stage, we began by studying the following photograph and wondering about it.

The kids wondered:

We can learn a lot from sources like photographs, models, the real thing, books, PebbleGo, and magazines.  Many of these sources were spread throughout the room and Room 408 used these sources to try and answer some of their questions (Investigation Stage).

 After our Investigation Stage, the students thought about what they had learned and what they thought was important to know about Ruby Bridges and recorded it on their learning clipboards. (Coalescing Stage).

To Go Public, we shared our new learning with each other and answered most of our questions.  We learned that even though she was little, Ruby Bridges was a civil rights leader and helped to change segregation by being one of the first black children to attend an all-white school.

We think Ruby is a pretty amazing girl!  That's a lot of thinking for one afternoon!