Thank you to all the families who were able to come to Conferences. It was wonderful spending time with each of you, sharing your child's learning so far this year.
Our poem this week is a silly one from Shel Silverstein. It is long, so I've included a link to a video version to watch with your child: Sick by Shel Silverstein
We continued developing our learning about the needs of living things through our pumpkin and corn experiment. Students documented what they learned from the experiment through deduction, inferencing and materials in the classroom such as nomenclature.
The wondering continues as students proceeded to ask MORE questions. We now have three student driven experiments happening in our classroom:
1. Will the corn and pumpkin continue to grow if we give them all their basic needs: food, water, shelter, space and air? Each student repotted a seedling in a cup with soil to observe over time.
2. What will happen to the pumpkin and seeds that we did not harvest for repotting? The pumpkin is currently in a bucket covered with window screen in our classroom, rotting and sprouting away!
3. Do all corn kernals pop when heated? Students are harvesting the kernals from a calico corn cob with then intention of developing this experiment.
Continuing with our understanding of the brain, behaviour and learning, we started examining how we respond to problems. We watched a great video that made connections to our prior learning, and allowed for opportunities to scaffold our next steps:
Why Do We Lose Control Of Our Emotions?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bKuoH8CkFc
We brainstormed and documented big, medium and small problems on our Problem Thermometer, matching appropriate responses to each of the problems.
Finally, we did individual writing giving personal examples.
At home, you can chat with your child about the examples below - are they small, medium or big problems? How do you know? What should be the size of your reaction? What would that look like?
Next week, we will share our problem solving strategies, as well as learn new ones that are classroom friendly, and create a personal problem solving menu for when we need help.
Finally, we gathered and analyzed data from our Landforms Survey to determine which landforms are going to make up our constructed community. I was very impressed by the organization and interpretation of data, as well as their calm communication of ideas and solutions when the data wasn't what they hoped for.
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| Our original data. |
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| Our adjusted data based on solutions proposed and voted on by the students. |
So, we can finally announce that our community will have plains, a river and an ocean. Sounds like a nice holiday spot :) We look forward to constructing the land and bodies of water in the next week.
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
Ms Thomas
Ms Thomas
