We were thrilled to come in from the weekend and see growth in our experiments! Here we are conferring with our partner(s) about the experiment. Breckin and Abby (above) are looking at the difference between a plant in the light and in the dark. Alex is doing a great job of taking notes of his observation in his journal. Diego and Haley and Jenna and Tyler decided a ruler might be a good tool to help with the specifics of their experiment. We can't wait to see what will happen next!
We have been working on the essential question: How do you add numbers accurately and efficiently? We completed an assignment where we solved word problems with larger numbers. After they were finished, each student was asked to make up and solve two story problems that were multi-step. You can look at their work to see the efficient strategy they used to compute and the check that they did to check their work. Featured in this blog are Brendan's work and Carson's work.
We have just finished our first chapter in Social Studies about the Navajo, Yurok, Cherokee, and Haudenosaunee. We created sand paintings like they do in ceremonies for the Navajo. We also decorated arrowheads. We learned that arrowheads were used to hunt and also in times of war. Check out all of our pictures of the fun we had during Social Studies today!
This week we put up new artwork on our Think Tank. This activity was called Draw your teacher. The only catch was that the students had to use their non-writing hand to draw our portraits. We split the class into two groups so that we could each have our portrait done. Come by the classroom to see their artwork on the bulletin board. Check out Corinne and Emily's interpretation of their teachers.
We learned that we eat all the different parts of the plant. For example, we eat the roots, seeds, flowers, leaves, and fruits of a plant. We had the kids try a few that they may never have tried before. We tried carrots, for a familiar one, radish, parsnip and beets. Some students were surprised at how much they enjoyed some of the veggies. Below are Anton and Naiya who are pictured trying new things!
As you can see, we have concluded that plants do NOT need soil to grow. Some of our beans are already germinating. You can see the roots in both Corinne's and John's plant. A lot of the other plants are sprouting as well. Corinne also already has the beginning of her leaf. We have had several beans that have needed to be redone due to mold. We have concluded that was either because of too much water added or to location of the baggie in the room. We have no natural light, we are only working with the lights inside our classroom.
One of our favorite CRISS strategies is "jigsawing." Jigsawing is taking one piece of textual information, and splitting it up into groups. Each group gets assigned a part of the text to learn and become experts on. They are then responsible for making a visual aid to go along with their presentation to "teach" the class their topic. We did this for our last lesson in Social Studies about the Haudenosaunee or Iroquois Indians.
One of our first explorations in our plant unit is to see if plants need soil to grow. Before we did the activity, we asked the kids to make a prediction of what would happen. It was split pretty evenly with students who thought the plant would grow and others who thought it wouldnt. Students were also allowed to decide how much water would be poured into their baggies, with a maximum amount of up to 50 mL. Our baggies are all over the room in different locations! We will be observing them every few days to take note of the changes that have happened. We will keep you posted on the results!
We had learned about the Yurok and how they used tooth shell strings as their form of currency. We asked students to think of a tribe name and come up with a unit of currency to use in their tribe. They also had to think of a few things that they would buy with their currency. They turned out great! Check out Carson's and Corinne's which are featured on this blog.
