Learning to be scientists - September

Learning the Work of Scientists on PhotoPeach

What is a Scientist?

In an effort to get to know one another and to learn how to work in a team, we began our first inquiry question - What is a scientist?

This question became a firestorm of new questions:
What do scientist do?
What kind of scientist are there?
Can anyone be a scientist?
How so scientists learn about things?

Our discussions led us in many directions with differing ideas.  We decided the only way to really understand our questions is to begin the year doing the work of a scientist.  For the upcoming weeks we will be involved with the The Private Eye method that engages us in the skills of observation and thinking by analogy.  The purpose of The Private Eye is to "develop the interdisciplinary mind: Hands-on thinking skills, creativity, literacy, and scientific literacy."

On Friday, we organized our Private Eye notebooks and learned how to use a loupe, with the help of Mrs. Giese and Mrs. Piker.  We learned about 5 basic patterns in nature and sorted our nature objects into pattern groups.  The room was a buzz with what the students were discovering under the loupes.  Spirals, branching, explosions, spheres, and packing patterns popped in front of our eyes.

Beginning next week we will work on writing analogies and drawing.  My goal for the students is to develop the main habits of the artist/scientist:  developing a sense of wonder in looking closely at an object and thinking by analogy.  I am also looking to develop an understanding of best effort, focus, and following directions.  Our student bloggers will be posting our work and progress.

The First Week of School: Learnings from Pete the Cat

Pete the Cat, our class mascot, welcomed 24 students to Room 303.  Pete has his own story that we all enjoyed the first day of school.  Pete teaches us a lesson - the importance of  having a positive attitude in the face of small challenges and disappointments. Pete keeps going along singing his song and reminds us, "It's all good!"  With Pete's wisdom at hand we have been working on creating a classroom community that will inspire us to learn and collaborate with each other.

We spent the week talking about learning, having good habits to help us learn, what it means to be smart, the importance of respect and collaboration/cooperation. This year we will be working on becoming more responsible about our learning and behavior.  The theme of the year will be the Freedom to Learn. During week 2 we will be working on the agreements to make it all work.

Freedom to Learn

In this classroom you are given as much freedom as possible to make your own decisions about your learning.

Freedom comes from taking responsibility for your own learning and behavior.

There are basically 3 Rules:

1.            Everyone will be respectful at all times.

2.          The Classroom is a place for learning.

3.          Our core values extend outside the classroom.

As a class we need to develop procedures/ritual to make the rules work.  They will become our working agreements. 

In the next couple of weeks the students will be keeping up with the blog telling you about what we are learning and doing.  Look for student work, photos, and words of wisdom.