Elements of Design with Ms. Robin

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This week we were hard at work on our salmon mural. Our scientists and artists created detailed sharpie line drawings of three salmon life cycle stages: egg, alevin, and fry. Together artists created a river background complete with cool, fresh water and a speckled gravel redd (nest). We are waiting for three absent students to add their contributions before we post a photo of the mural. This week we mailed our Flat Stanleys around the world to 21 different locations! We already heard back from Flat Aaron Big Bob Beatty in Uganda. We learned about the wild Kampala traffic jams where people can get stuck for hours, just trying to go a few miles. They call this “The Jam”. Several people in Kampala, Uganda use motorcycles or Boda Bodas to get around. We can’t wait to receive updates from the rest of our Flat Stanleys in the coming weeks! In writer’s workshop this week we started a unit on informational writing. We learned how to use the TIDE acronym to plan our essays. TIDE stands for topic, important ideas, details, and ending sentence. We created a shared essay about why Oregon is a great state using ideas that were collected from our Flat Stanleys exploring Oregon last month. Next week students will create their own essays using the TIDE acronym as a way to organize their notes. As usual, one of our highlights this week was music making with Ms. McKenzie. This morning Emersyn did a fantastic job representing the Otter classroom during our Friday Summit. She shared about how the Otters have a weekly popcorn stand on Tuesdays to practice counting money and making change. This afternoon Roman’s grandma, Ms. Robin, came in to led us in an art lesson about the elements of design. Ms. Robin is a retired first and second grade teacher who is passionate about art. We discussed the true primary colors: magenta, yellow, and cyan. Then students used only those colors to create many beautiful colors in our imaginary “paint factory”. We will use all this beautiful painted paper in upcoming art lessons with Ms. Robin.

Alevins, Book Bags, and Flat Stanley Letters

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Last week was another busy, fun-filled week! On Monday we discovered that the rest of our salmon eggs hatched! There are now around 200 tiny alevin in our tank. Each alevin has a bright orange egg sac that provides the nutrients the fish need to survive and grow. We continue to track the temperature units (TUs) so that we will know approximately when to release the alevin in the Tualatin River. We are now around 1000 TUs and students are getting experience calculating larger numbers. We completed a scientific journal entry about the alevin in our thinking book this week and also began working on a salmon mural. In addition, we spent much time outside enjoying the gorgeous fall weather. In preparation for winter, Plumber Dave came to remove the pump from our engineering sandbox. While we were sad to see the pump go, students were delighted to watch Dave work and asked many questions about the process. Many students have now worked with Ms. Casey to learn how to play the board game Knock Out and it was one of our most popular math choices this week. This game provides students with ample opportunities to improve their number fluency. On Wednesday we reviewed musical terminology and concepts with Ms. McKenzie through songs and instrument playing. On Thursday we finished sewing our book bags with Ms. Linda. The bags are gorgeous! We will be using our book bags for upcoming library trips. This week Ms. Libby came in to continue working on our sun print art project with small groups of students. The prints are turning out fantastic and students are greatly enjoying the process too. This week we also finished editing our Flat Stanley letters and our Flat Stanleys are ready to embark on their journeys around the world. You can visit our Flat Stanley blog for a sneak peek at where our Flat Stanleys are headed! We are quite excited to learn more about other states and countries. To kick off our learning, we had a guest speaker from the Netherlands in to tell us about life in the Netherlands. Then Kate’s parents came in to teach us about life in Taiwan. We especially loved learning about the Taiwan night markets. We even got to try some seasoned corn and guava after their presentation- yum!

Costume Parade and Fall Fun

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Our week was filled with fall fun and authentic learning opportunities. On Monday our mathematicians brainstormed a list of mathematical questions involving our pumpkins. We made predictions about how many seeds were in each pumpkin. Some students predicted that the largest pumpkin would have the most seeds, while others predicted that the smallest pumpkin would have the most seeds. On Tuesday students worked in teams to determine how many seeds were each in pumpkin. Students had to work together to determine the best way to count all their seeds. Some teams sorted the seeds into groups of ten and then hundreds to make counting quick and accurate. Most of us were surprised to discover that one of our medium sized pumpkins had the most seeds- over 600! Later in the week we roasted the seeds and split the total into thirds. We seasoned one third of the seeds with cinnamon and sugar. We seasoned another third with salt, and we seasoned the third group with pumpkin pie spice. Then we roasted the seeds and had fun tasting the different flavored seeds. We voted on our favorite seed seasoning and created a math graph to show our results. The vast majority of students preferred the seeds with salt! This week during project time several students painted their pumpkin or used remeda materials to create fun fall art pieces. Outside this week we relished getting to play in fall leaves and during our music time with Ms. McKenzie we sang a song called Pass the Pumpkin. On Thursday we had our annual ELC costume parade. We loved getting to admire each others’ costumes. On Friday we created a memory book page about our Halloween adventures. This week we’ve been calculating the temperature units in our fish tank to determine when our fish might hatch. Today we calculated that our tank is around 837 TUs and the fish typically begin to hatch around 850 TUs. Three fish hatched early and we are predicting that many more will hatch this weekend.

Zephyr Farm Adventures

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On Monday we took a field trip to Zephyr Farm to learn more about the crops that grow in Oregon. Farmer Bryan gave us a tour of his farm and allowed students to examine and taste a wide variety of crops. We got to try fennel, watermelon, black radishes, strawberries, broccoli, kale, ground cherries, bell peppers, poblano peppers, and leeks. I was impressed with students’ willingness to try new foods. Each student also got to pick a pumpkin to bring back to school for some upcoming science, art, and math explorations. A huge thank you to Mark for documenting our farm adventures and to Farmer Bryan for hosting us!

Fish Eggs and Sun Prints

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We’ve been busy learning all about Oregon! Students shared more of their Flat Stanley photos from around Oregon. Last week we took a virtual field trip to TMK Creamery. We learned about Oregon dairy farms and got to see different kinds of cows being milked. This week, we had a visit from Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife. They brought us approximately 200 salmon eggs that we get to raise in a fish tank in our classroom. We sketched the eggs and recorded our observations in our thinking books so that we can document how the salmon change over time. Salmon are one of Oregon’s keystone species and we can’t wait to learn more about these interesting creatures. We did an art project that depicted birch trees in autumn. Birch trees are one of the many trees that are native to Oregon. Ms. Fern came in to teach us about a huge Oregon employer and research center: OHSU. Mr. Derrick came in to talk to us about Nike, another of Oregon’s important employers. Mr. Derrick talked about the importance of following your dreams and showed students some innovative new shoe technology. This week we took advantage of a sunny, fall day to create sun prints with Ms. Libby. Students worked both individually and in groups to arrange nature and loose parts to create these sun print art pieces. Nine students had an opportunity to participate in this project so far and the rest will have an opportunity in the coming days. Other highlights over the last couple of weeks were our music making with Ms. McKenzie, our outdoor explorations, and our engineering endeavors. Our October has been packed with fun and learning so far. It’s hard to believe that it’s almost the end of the month already…