Marine Biology!

Hello family and friends!

Our awesome Ms. Michelle wanted to write the blog post for this week...enjoy!!

As you’ve probably heard we have started a new study of exploration. We are studying about the ocean for the next two weeks in our classroom! Marine biology is the study of the plants and creatures that live in the ocean….and we are marine biologists!!!

Throughout the year we have done tons of exploration projects as a group, but this time Ms. Rachael and I have decided to take it to a new level. Your child is going to transform into a marine biologist and learn about the Ocean by themselves with some guidance. One of our goals for this year is to get the students ready for Kindergarten where students will work more independently when learning. Throughout this week and next we will be helping your student learn what that independence should look like. In order to do this we decided that during the first part of this week we would give the students a broad understanding of what marine biology is and then at the end of the week and throughout next week we would let them dive deeper into a topic of their choice related to the subject of ocean creatures.

When we started off this week the kids were really excited about the ocean and marine biology. We got in pairs and did a book walk just like we do with every other exploration we do. But instead of doing our KWL chart first like we normally do, we wanted them to look at books before they asked questions. I think that helped a lot because they were able to see cool things in the books and ask questions about what they saw! I am excited to dive in and start answering their questions.

Tuesday we read A LOT of our non-fiction books that were in our science center. Then we watched a short 3 minute video about the ocean and the plants and creatures that live there. Some of the things we learned from the video were really cool! Some interesting facts included:  the ocean is a habitat, its covers 70% of the earth’s surface, 97% of the ocean has yet to be discovered (which they thought was amazing, the reactions on their faces were priceless!!), not all sand is the same color, and the ocean is made up of salt water.

Wednesday we created a masterpiece!!! If you haven’t seen it yet I must say it is amazing. We started the day off by reading books, looking up pictures online, and brainstorming ideas about all the things we needed in our coral reef. We started off with a 17 foot piece of blue paper, about 7 different colors of paint, and 14 eager students ready to paint! Each student got a portion of the paper to create their masterpiece.  I honestly had no idea they would get into it as much as they did. Every single one of them took their time, really concentrating on the details they put into the painting. As they worked Ms. Rachael and I walked around and asked them about the colors they used, what creatures they wanted to portray in the painting, and how it related to the coral reefs we learned about. Under the mural we have labeled each section with a  name and a quote about what the student painted! 

Thursday I brought in about 30 library books related to specific sea creatures! Of course they were curious about why we needed sooo many books. I told them “you are going to become a marine biologist!” Their excitement was through the roof!!! We told them that over the course of the next few days they were going to research and learn all about their favorite sea animal! Then next week we will put our research together, document our findings, and present it to the class. Everyone has chosen their very own animal. Some of the animals they chose are puffer fish, angler fish, giant octopus, and great white shark! Friday we started going through all of our library books and looking for pictures of our animal. Once we found the pictures we marked them with sticky notes for future reference. Next week we will go back, read what the books have to say about our animals, and start documenting our findings! I am so excited to see how all of their research and hard work pays off!!!

 

Approaches to Learning:

• Demonstrate increasing ability to identify and take appropriate risks in order to learn and demonstrate new skills.
• Show curiosity in an increasing variety of activities, tasks, and learning centers.
• Demonstrate eagerness and interest as a learner by questions and adding ideas.

Social & Emotional:

• Demonstrate self direction by making choices among peers, activities and materials.
• Demonstrate confidence by participating in most classroom activities.
• Use classroom materials responsibly, most of the time.

Language & Literacy:

• Show interest in informational texts about familiar objects.
• Make relevant comments or appropriate responses to story events or characters.
• Recall some details in stories read aloud.
• Explore books independently.

Mathematics:

• Generate conjectures based on personal experiences and simple reasoning.
• Investigate solutions to simple problems.
• Classify objects in their environment by color, shape, size or function.
• Integrate mathematical ideas into personal representations.

 

 

Artist hard at work...

 

 

 We are researchers...

 

 

 

Creating our ocean zones...