Data collection and graphing

Our data was M&M's!  We organized the data, recorded our findings and graphed the results.

Animals Have Unique Features

This week we began our new science unit focusing on animal adaptations and how humans sometimes borrow these ideas from nature to solve problems. For example, airplanes were inspired by birds and our bike helmets are similar to a turtle's shell.

We began by observing photos of a variety of animals. Students responded to the following questions in the science journals as they looked at each picture: "What do you notice about this animal?" "What unique features does this animal have?" "Why might it have this feature?"

After recording their observations, we held our first "science talk".  Students practiced "Listening to Understand" (one of our habits of interactions) while students took turns sharing their thoughts about each animal.

As part of this unit, students will also research an animal and write a report. We started our research by listening to ebooks and info bits articles. Both of these sites can be accessed through Library Links on our school webpage.  Next week we will do more research and begin writing!! 

Writing Long Ago

We are finishing up our study of Long Ago and Today with a final project that the children have been excited to try: writing with a quill pen.  They enjoyed the experience and didn't find it too hard.  They worked carefully and neatly.  (However, we are relieved that we don't need open jars of ink throughout the classroom on a daily basis.)

Goodbye and thank you

We gave our UVM student intern thank you notes that we each made.  We appreciated her help each Thursday morning (and the goodie bags that she gave us.)  We also wrote advice for her explaining what she should do, when she is a teacher, to help children learn.  We will miss Emilie.

CVU Athletes Read Aloud

Three seniors, who are athletes at Champlain Valley Union High School (CVU), came to our classroom to read aloud to our class.  We enjoyed sharing what sports we like and they told us the sports that they play.

Long Ago School

As part of our study of comparing life today and long ago, we pretended our classroom was in the past.  Emilie, our UVM intern, acted as a teacher from long ago, and the children had fun acting as students from long ago too.  We lined up to enter the classroom, sat in rows, read in unison from our hornbook and Primer book and had a spelling bee, and made our manners when class was done (bowing for boys and curtseying for girls).  We were curious to  find out what happened when the rules from the strict  long ago teacher were not followed.  Ask your child what happened.  Our last picture shows one of our students enjoying his acting role.

Shelburne Farms Field Trip

We had so much fun on our trip to Shelburne Farms to learn about farm life long ago.  First we watched a skit about 2 girls waking up to go to school, long ago and today, and made observations about the differences.  Then we tried farm chores from long ago.  We crushed corn to feed the hens. We threw a bale of hay from the barn. We washed, hung to dry, carded and spun wool.  We kneaded dough, baked it, made butter and ate the results.  And, we made candles.

Mix-It Up Day

Younger and older classes throughout the school got together to mix-it up.  We join with our buddy classroom, Ms. Natalie's 4th grade class from the Wonder Team, just across the kiva from us.  We shared our "If you give a mouse a cookie" style books that we wrote.  The 4th grade students shared their favorite parts of realistic fiction stories that they had written.  We were amazed to see that their stories were up to 10 pages long.