What does it mean to wonder?

Wednesday, September 09, 2015

Yesterday, we had a special guest visit our classroom. Dr. Patterson brought down a praying mantis that he found, and the praying mantis hung out with us in the classroom for the day.

Before I even mentioned the praying mantis to my friends, I asked them what the word wonder means. Some friends thought it meant to not know what the word meant, some friends thought it meant to want to know more. I told my friends that in a way, both of these were correct!

As a class, we made a chart of things we wondered about...

(Honestly, I wonder about some of these things too.. ;-) )

Then, while sitting on the carpet, I showed each friend the "mystery visitor" in the jar. We did not discuss anything we knew / wanted to know about the visitor, we went straight to our wonder journals and got to work.

After working on our wonders for about 10 minutes, we shared our wonders. Here are a few wonders that I recorded.

"I wonder if it would hop.."

"I wonder if it's going to turn colors..."

"I wonder if I let my brother's praying mantis out.. if it would fly.."

"I wonder where he lives..."

"I wonder who got the jar..."

"I wonder what it is..."

"I wonder if it has a name..."

Such excellent wonderings! Today we will begin our "Wonder of the Day" as an extension of this wondering from yesterday. Stay tuned for more about what we inquire / research this year!

What are Labels?

Tuesday, September 08, 2015

Today, as a part of our maps and communities unit, we started creating our individual map books. These are inspired by our mentor text, My Map Book by Sara Fanelli. My Map Book doesn't tell us a story, in fact, each page is a map! Today was our first time reading it and we noticed a few things. Firstly, we noticed that it looked like a kid drew the maps, that was when we realized WE can draw maps too! Then, we noticed it wasn't telling us a story... every page was a map about something special in the child's life who wrote. Lastly, we noticed the child who made the maps in the book, didn't write in sentences. They wrote one word to describe the picture. We call these labels.

Then, I told my friends something exciting.. they were going to get to label ME! I had some pre-made labels with sticky notes. As a class, we read the word on the sticky note and friends "labeled" my face. It was so much fun! (And we were all very giggly.. hence our blurry pictures ;) )

Friends labeled my eyes, my hair, my ears, my nose, my lips, my shirt, my neck and my shoulder! Like I said, we were a classroom full of giggleboxes!

Then, we got down to work. During the first week of school, we drew our self portrait, "Map of My Face" without writing anything. Today, we labeled features on our faces.

Wow!! I don't know about you, but I am VERY impressed by the work my friends did today labeling. Nice work, friends!

Leave a Comment Maps and Communities, Writing

Wonder of the Week #2

Friday, September 04, 2015

How are maps made?

Why is it Important To Wash Our Hands?

Wednesday, September 02, 2015

Today is Wonder Wednesday, so we wanted to know, Why is it important to wash our hands? We discussed reasons why it's important to wash our hands. Many friends mentioned things like germs and sickness. We had a discussion about what germs are and how germs are spread. Many students said germs are spread by touching things without washing our hands. So, we decided to test it out for ourselves with an experiment.

Here is how we used 3 pieces of bread to find out why it is important to wash our hands.

First, we used our dirty, germy hands to touch one piece of bread.

We put that piece of bread in a baggie and labeled the baggie "Dirty Hands."

Then, we ALL washed our hands! (With soap AND water)

Then, we all touched another piece of bread with our CLEAN hands!

We took this piece of bread and put it into a baggie. We labeled the baggie "Clean Hands". We took the last piece of bread and put it into a baggie labeled "Control". I explained to our friends we need to know what the normal bread would look like when it's in a baggie as well, so we needed a "control" for our experiment.

The pieces of bread needed to be stored in a cool, dry place and I wanted to make sure everyone could see it, so we taped the baggies to the end of the cubbies.

Then, we used our Wonder Journals for the first time and we recorded our predictions for what would happen in our experiment. Some friends predicted the dirty hands bread would turn red, some predicted it would grow spots, and others predicted nothing would happen!