We are Batty about Bats!

 Wednesday, Miss Lora came to talk to us about how cool bats are.  We learned that the smallest bat is the size of a jelly bean.  There is a bat called the bee bat, and that bats like dark places.

 before Lora came we wrote on note cards what we thought we knew about bats.  We got into groups and shared what we knew and then we made a bat chart.  After Lora came we made a "what we learned" chart.  We wrote down something new that we didn't know before, or something that changed our minds about what we thought.  It was GREAT!  Before Miss Lora came 10 kiddos thought bats were birds, 7 kiddos thought bats were, well, bats.  After Miss Lora told us about bats all 17 said that bats are mammals NOT birds!  They don't have feathers, they have hair!

Balloon Plants

 On Monday, Ms. Lora from the Cass County Conservations came to talk with our class about plants.  We talked about the 4 things that plants need to survive:  Air, Soil, Water, Sun.

 Then we got to plant "Balloon Plants".  First we put soil into the balloons.

Then we added some seeds (Radishes).

 Then we added water.

Then we added air.

 Then we wrote about the steps that we took to make them.

At the end of week 1 we already had sprouts!  At the end of 4 weeks we will transplant them into a window box and continue to monitor their growth.  

Who knew that you could grow plants in a balloon.  

Living Things

In Science right now we are studying living things.  Our "Big Idea" is Living things grown and change in many ways.  

To "get at" what we knew about living things we first talked about what living things are.  They each had a paper and listed 5 things that they knew were living.  Then we filled out this 'T chart'.  We knew that there were two groups of things: Plants and Animals.  The first column on each side was what they came up with on their own.

THEN, we broke up into a Boy team and a Girl team.  Each group had a piece of chart paper and their challenge was to come up with as many different animals and write them down as they could in 5 minutes, when the timer went off it was pencils down or get a penalty.  They talked about how they could do this so the other team wouldn't hear what they were saying.  It was really interesting to see 11 girls around a little piece of chart paper, but they all worked well together.  Would you believe BOTH groups came up with the exact SAME number of animals and plants.  On the 'T chart' the girls is the second column and the boys is the third column.  It was pretty amazing to see their team work. 

We then generated questions about animals during our Daily 5 writing time the next day.  After we listed them on chart paper we decided if the questions were researchable or testable (are we going to find the answer in a book, OR get messy with an experiment).  

The first question we decided to answer was "How can we break animals up into groups?"  We made the CLAIM that Groups of animals are called families, we will see if our thinking changes.  We used our science text books to find the answers, (because our science text book was written by experts on the subject) and made another chart.

We then went back to our 'T chart" and circled the animals that we wrote done according to the characteristics about each group we learned.  At the bottom of the 'T chart' you see ?people?.  We were VERY unsure about what exactly people were, we know that we are living BUT we didn't know where it fit.  After researching the different groups we found out that since people have hair, don't lay eggs, and their babies drink milk from their mommies, they are mammals.  Some of the kids were shocked that we are in the same group as tigers and dolphins!  AMAZING!

Right now we are working on some research projects using World Book Web or Kids.  We completed our investigation journals about each group of animals and are now working on detail research on animals of Iowa.  More to come later!

The end of the dinosaurs...

Our class has been studying dinosaurs as part of our science unit on living-nonliving and was once living.  We are really working on the terms Questions, Claims, and Evidence. 
For our questions this time we wanted to know more and more and more about dinosaurs, how many kinds there were, how big they were, what they ate, etc.  We have been doing research on the computers and in media center books.  We took a virtual tour of the Museum of Natural History which was SUPER COOL, we tried to get Dr. Scott from PBS to Skype with us about dinosaurs, but he was unable to, BUT he did send us a COOL email to share with the class!  We have watched some clips from PBS's Dinosaur Train and used World Book Web Online Classroom editon to complete our research.  Thursday we finished our section on "was once living".  I broke the students up into groups, Plant eaters, Meat eaters, and Flying dinosaurs.  Let them work by themselves or in pairs on the computers to do research.  I love WBW because you can LISTEN to descriptions instead of just read it.  We really enjoyed exploring the world of dinosaurs!  After our research, each group labeled a digram, each student shared 1 fact that they found and then we shared our creations in the hallway for everyone to see! 

Science posters

How we start our science units

Then we generate questions about our "big idea" and decide if our questions are researchable or testable.

Then we make claims based on our questions.  With our data we find out the facts.

With our evidence is how we interpret the data and see if our claims are supported or wrong. 

Then we revisit the concept map and make changes as our questions are answered.