I love inquiry! Good science education requires both learning scientific concepts and developing scientific thinking skills. Inquiry is an approach to learning that involves a process of exploring the natural or material world, and that leads to asking questions, making discoveries, and testing those discoveries in the search for new understanding. Even better than the guided inquiries that we do during our units of inquiry is when we have an opportunity for authentic inquiry. This came to us last week when we had the earth quake. It was all most of our little learners could talk about, and they had PLENTY of questions. As a result, we spent a good chunk of our morning asking questions and inquiring all about earthquakes. To finish our weeklong mini unit on the Growth Mindset, we worked in three groups to create a Rube Goldberg machine that could pour a glass of water. This activity solidified our lessons on 'The Power of Yet,' and taught us that we can learn from mistakes and perseverance. Students began by working collaboratively to discuss their ideas. They followed these discussions by collecting materials, blueprinting their plan, and presenting it to their group. When each group had collectively agreed on their plan, they set off to build their machine. With plenty of trial, error, chaos, mess, discussions and problem solving, each time came up with a functional machine. ...Some more functional than others. This morning we used base 10 blocks to learn about place value. Our 'Math Message' was: How many cubes are equal to 1 long? (How many ones are equal to 1 ten). The children shared their strategies for solving the Math Message. Most students lined up cubes next to the long. Students learned that a long is a group of 10 individual cubes that are connected. We learned that longs can also be called tens. Connecting ten cubes makes it possible to count the cubes by 10s. Cubes that are not in a group can be called ones because they can be counted by 1s. We discussed other instances in which we have grouped objects to count them, such as making tally marks, bundling popsicle sticks as part of the Number of the Day Routine, or counting objects. After discussing this, each child was provided with a Tens-and-Ones Mat. The class used base-10 blocks to represent numbers. For example, I said: place 3 longs and 4 cubes on the mat. How many cubes are shown? How do you know? Sample answer: I counted 34 cubes. There are 3 longs, which are 3 groups of ten cubes, or 30, and then 4 more cubes. We then counted the tens and counted on the ones. Once we got the hang of things, we learned how to exchange or regroup. I displayed 1 long and 15 cubes on my mat and asked:What number is shown? After we figured out that it was 25, we discussed how we can be sure. This is when we stared to trade: We traded 10 cubes for one long, then count the total number and got 25. We will continue practicing this throughout the week. Today we started a new unit of inquiry on weather. We read a book called 'What is the Weather like Today?'. We also began our inquiry cycle by discussing what we already know about weather. Then after looking at books, we began to inquire about what we wanted to find out during this unit of inquiry. Please make sure that you are watching the flipped learning videos on weather nightly.
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March 2017
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