Here are some highlights from our week:
Why do scientists study animals?
This was an important question we tried to answer this week. Animal research can teach us so much about our world and even ourselves. We came up with two main reasons for why scientists study animals.
1. To learn more about the animals and be able to help them.
2. To see how animal behaviors are similar to human behaviors.
Animal Research Groups
The whole 2nd grade is working together to create norms for our school community! Students are in mixed groups of 4-7 based off of their scientific sketch animal. We have groups of wolves, lions, giraffes, bees, ants, dolphins, meerkats, elephants, fish, and penguins. Ask your child about what animal they've been studying!
First, the students met with their small groups to conduct further research on their animal. They used nonfiction books and online articles written for kids, and then came together to talk about the facts they found about the animal and its community.
Next, students were challenged to make a connection between their animal community and our own community. For example, "Each ant has a special job that helps their colony survive." The connection to our school community that the ant group made was "We all work together to make our school a happy and successful place."
Here are the connections that the students made:
We will use this information, along with students' scientific sketches and a photo of the group acting out the school norm, to create a giant posters book to display in our school.
Data Collection
We had an important realization as we started writing our school norms: We needed feedback from the school! It did not seem fair to create school norms without making sure the whole school liked and agreed to them.
In their animal research groups, the students went to every classroom and staff member to get their opinion on the school norm they created. We also had our student collaborative members present to the rest of the committee. The students used a tally chart to record how many people liked the norm, and how many people did not. They also wrote down any critique that people gave them on how to make the norm better.
Good news: The school really liked our norms! This was really important because it means that we can continue on with our project!
Pumpkin Patch
Oh, the stories that will come from the visit to the pumpkin patch! While we had lots of fun, one of the rides got the best of us. I believe it's safe to say that most of us were feeling better by Friday when we cut into our class pumpkin :)
Math- Estimation
Pumpkins provide a great teaching opportunity to talk about Estimation! First, we talked about how estimation means to make an educated guess. We many not know the exact answer, but we can use our knowledge about the topic and do a little research to help inform our estimation. When we make estimations, we use words like about, approximately, close to, roughly, and around and estimations that include numbers usually end with a 0 (ex. 570 rather than 572).
First, we started by just making a guess without using any resources. We had every number between 100 and 1,000,000! Then, we did a little research. We found out these three things:
1. A medium sized pumpkin usually has about 500 seeds in it.
2. Number of sections in a pumpkin X 16 = Approximate number of pumpkin seeds inside
3. Usually, the bigger the pumpkin, the fewer pumpkin seeds inside
Now with this information, we made our estimates. Using this calculation we found that our pumpkin most likely had about 530 pumpkin seeds in it. Then, students made their own educated guess using this information.
We opened our pumpkin and counted the seeds. There were 673 pumpkin seeds inside! Diego had the closes estimate of 700 seeds.
Here are some pictures from our week: