Photosynthesis Song and Forest Stories
/In October during writer’s workshop we focused on writing personal narratives. We practiced zooming in on small moments from our lives and telling those stories with interesting details. This month students have decided to try their hand at imaginative writing. On Tuesday we checked out several imaginative books from the public library. We spent time reading fantasy books and compiled a list of what we noticed about those stories. A common thread in the imaginative stories we read was magic! Students were excited to create their own fantastical stories. During our morning project time students can spend time at our small world forest table creating imaginative stories that take place in the forest. During writer’s workshop, they then record and illustrate their stories.
During our daily numeracy centers groups of three to four students visit each math center. Students have a chance to visit all the centers throughout the week. At our teacher center this week we worked on using different tools to measure lengths, widths, and heights. We used rulers, centimeter cubes, and tape measures. Students worked in partners to measure very large objects, such as the length of the outdoor classroom! Our measurements are getting increasingly accurate and several mathematicians choose to continue measuring things during our outdoor choice time each day. At the addition center this week students used OSMO Numbers to practice quickly adding numbers to 20. Students are working on mental math strategies and are getting quicker at figuring out the sums of 3, 4, and 5 addends. At our number building center students designed structures using the place value blocks. After designing and sketching their structure they had to determine how many unit cubes were used in the construction. Students needed to make trades as they counted their cubes (ten individual units equals a rod. Ten rods equals a hundred flat. Ten hundred flats equal a thousand cube). Students are becoming increasingly proficent at building numbers into the thousands. At our board game center students played the Allowance money game or Sequence Addition with a parent volunteer.
Our book bags are finished! Please take time to admire your child’s book bag as it comes home each day. Students worked hard to measure, cut, and sew these bags. They are extremely proud of their hard work. A HUGE thank you to Mollie and Evan for helping us with this large project. This week several students chose to join a book club. In book club a small group of students all read the same book and then meet to discuss what they read. One group is reading Magic Tree House Dinosaurs Before Dark. Another group is reading The Boxcar Children. Yet another student is doing a pen pal book group where the children agree on how much to read each day, then write letters about what they read. The pen pals are reading Malala: My Story of Standing Up for Girls Rights. More students will join book clubs as the year goes on. As always, we loved our Wednesday afternoon Spanish read aloud story with Ms. Marissa.
This week we started reading Can You Hear the Trees Talking: Discovering the Hidden Life of the Forest By Peter Wohlleben. We learned some of the specific parts of plant leaves. Did you know that leaves have structures called stomata that are similar to mouths? The stomata can open and close to allow CO2 and oxygen to pass in and out of the plant. Stomata can also close up when it’s hot and dry to prevent water loss. We breathed on the windows in our Cedar Classroom so we could see how we release moisture when we breathe out. It’s pretty amazing that plants can create their own food through photosynthesis. We read books about photosynthesis and watched a video clip describing the process. In the video clip there was a short song about photosynthesis. It got stuck in our heads! Several students wanted to create a band to sing the song for the class. The students formed a band and practiced the song during their outside choice time. The class loved it so much that we added the song to our poetry binders as our poem of the week. This week we also began using field guides to identify the leaves and pinecones that we found on our nature walk. In addition, we are currently working on a tree art piece. Leone taught us the technique for drawing realistic looking trees. During our explorations Davis found some interesting patterns on the logs in our outdoor classroom. We think the paths were created by insects but we need to do more research.
Photosynthesis Song
Give me 6 water
6 carbon dioxide
I take that and look what
I do on the inside,
sunlight as my engine,
I can’t wait to send*,
the glucose I make,
chuck 6 oxygen as waste
I’m chloroplast
Photosynthesis is my task
It’s a blast
And I’m jazzed
Why’d I tell ya?
Because you asked
(*original song lyrics said “taste” instead of “send”. Carina pointed out that leaves don’t technically taste, so we changed the lyrics to make them more scientifically accurate).
During project time this week we continued our exploration of coding with Mr. Adam using the Ozobots. You may see some coding sheets come home with your child in his/her cubby. Ask what the color coded instructions mean. Each color code instructs the Ozobot to perform a different command. This week we also wrote letters to our friend Kayla, in Australia. We found where Australia was on the map and globe and thought of questions to ask our pen pal.
