Vincent Van Gogh

Room 408 did a mini-inquiry and studied art by the painter Van Gogh.

We learned that he was troubled and often his paintings reflected his moods.  Later in his life, he started painting with bright colors.  He makes the viewer feel like they are in the painting.  In the painting below, he made the sun look so bright it actually made us feel like we should put on sunglasses!

One of the best paintings he ever did was called The Starry Night.  He likely painted this when he was really happy: 

The first graders noticed the stars and moon in the sky, as well as the tree.  They also commented on how the sky looked like it was moving.  I had found a cool optical illusion for them to try so that they could see the movement in the painting.  I hope you'll try it by clicking on the one of the following links:

optical illusion

or click on the video below:

We also played with the Starry Night app:


We worked with some Van Gogh apps, read some bibliographies, and researched his life on BrainPop, Jr.

After reading about Van Gogh's life and investigating The Starry Night, we created our own interpretations of The Starry Night.

Later we added the dark parts to the foreground of our paintings.
Here is a video of our art gallery!


One of the highlights of our inquiry was seeing The Starry Night in dominoes:

Ruby Bridges

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:
-Who is she?
-Who are those faces in the background?
-Are those men cops?  Detectives?  Special Agents?
-Is she in trouble?

We then talked about the different sources that researchers often use and came up with a list together.  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).

One of the most exciting moments of the afternoon was when some students made a connection...one of the paintings from a photograph is just like the mosaic that has been hanging in the hallway outside our classroom since the beginning of the year!

All of a sudden everyone was making the connection!

Zoe even noticed that President Obama had the painting hanging in his office!

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!

Learning About Civil Rights Leaders

Since we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in January, Room 408 did several mini-inquiries about civil rights leaders to gain a better understanding of the meaning behind the day off of school.

First we read several picture books about his life.

We learned that a major turning point in his early life was when a friend's mom told him that he couldn't play with her white son.

We also learned about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

We had a lot of discussions about what it means to demonstrate peacefully if you don't agree with someone.  We read This is the Dream which recapped how the Civil Rights Movement helped to change segregation.

We also heard an excerpt from Martin Luther King, Jr's "I Have a Dream" speech.

We started a tally for some of the phrases that he kept repeating in his powerful speech.

This led us to questions about slavery and how things used to be.  We read about Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad.

We are all glad that we can go to school together, no matter what color our skin.  We liked how Dr. Martin Luther King taught us that we shouldn't judge people by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

We want to help keep his dream alive.

Making Mistakes

Mrs. Going came to visit again, and this time she taught us about how we can learn from our mistakes.

Mistakes can help us grow and learn!

Hunting for Text Features

We spend a lot of time reading nonfiction.  We did a mini-inquiry on text features.  During Reading Workshop we kept our eyes peeled for features in nonfiction books that help teach us in special ways.

As soon as we found something we thought was a text feature, we marked it with a sticky note.

When we shared our findings, we found out that there are so many things authors do to help teach us!

We found maps...

 Headings...

We even found bold words and parts that help us pronounce words!

We found diagrams...

There are so many text features to help us learn!

Research Clubs Coming Up!

Room 408 has been busy immersing ourselves in our space research.  Our brains have been like sponges soaking up all this new information!

We have been recording our wonders and our learning...

We have downloaded lots of great space apps...

We had so much research that we needed to make Space Research Folders.  As we decorated our research folders we started noticing how our schema is already growing in the 2 weeks of immersion in space research!

Then we went right back to researching!

Now that we are nearing the end of the Immersion Stage and about ready to enter the Investigation Stage, we are getting ready for our small group research clubs.  After sharing our lingering questions we chose our top three choices for research clubs by ranking them on this form.

Tune in tomorrow to find out about our final research clubs.  After we take a few weeks to investigate our topics further, we'll go public with our learning--we're looking forward to teaching others in our space presentations!