Last Day in First Grade

The Friday before Spring Break was my last day in first grade. We went on a field trip to the Portland Children's Museum. The kids had a blast! Here are some photos from our trip.



























It was hard to take pictures because the kids so busy have the time they would move right out of the picture!

I really enjoyed my time in first grade. I was fortunate to have such a wonderful group of students. I think they have taught me more about teaching and life than I taught them. I am going to miss all of them, but I am lucky enough to be at the same school for my next placement. In fact, I have a few of their siblings in my fifth and sixth grade class. It will be a big transition to teaching fifth and sixth grade. I am curious to see how that goes. I am about to begin writing my unit for fifth grade. I will be teaching science to the fifth graders after the break and then working my way up to full time.

I hope everyone is enjoying their Spring Break!

An Amazing Discovery!

Last Friday we pretended the students were scientists that discovered a new Antarctic creature. The kids created the creatures out of clay and other items. They had to decide what their creature was, how it can survive the cold temperatures of Antarctica, where it lives (water/land), how it moves, and what it eats. After their creature was created they drew and labeled a picture of it. On Tuesday we held the Annual Antarctic Science Conference in our classroom. Then the students presented their creatures to the rest us. It was very fun and I loved the creative thought processes that they went into while creating. Here are a few pictures of what some of the creatures looked like.


"The Chinese Penguin"

"Turtle-Fish"

"Little Blue Seal"

"Lion Penguin"

Life Size Penguins

It has been almost a month since my last post! My apologies for getting so far behind! The students created wonderfully adorable life size penguins. The class has been continuing to battle various illnesses that have caused multiple day absences. We finally had everyone back and (fingers crossed) caught up. When creating the life sized penguins, the students looked at pictures, drew the outline and then painted the penguin. The pictures of the students and penguins are posted by penguin species tallest to smallest.

Emperor Penguins:







King Penguins





Gentoo Penguin



Chinstrap Penguins





Rockhopper Penguins







Little Blue Penguins

Finished Antarctica Mural Pictures

Here are pictures of our finished mural!

More penguins...

We have had a horrible cold traveling around the classroom this past week. Yesterday was the first day in four school days that no one was absent! I'm glad to have everyone back now and I hope no one else gets sick.

On Monday we learned about the Gentoo penguins. They are 3o inches high and 13 pounds. Thirteen pounds does not sound like that much but we soon discovered that it was pretty heavy for us to lift. Gentoo penguins have orange feet and black beaks with a little orange on top of their beak. They lay two eggs and have white feathers from eye to eye. Gentoo penguins live at the tip of the Palmer Peninsula.


Lifting the weight of a Gentoo


Measuring the height of a Gentoo


More measuring

On Tuesday we woke up to snow and had a two hour delay. Tuesday was also my first day being observed as a student teacher. My lesson was about Antarctic seals. We learned about four seals: Leopard seal, Weddell seal, Elephant seal, and Crabeater seal. At one of the stations the students measured the length of one of the four seals. At the second station the students did a puzzle and wrote down the anatomy of a Weddell seal. At the third station the students did independent research on seals. We discovered some really interesting facts and we learned that seals are a lot bigger than we thought they were! The Crabeater seal is 8.5 ft long, the Weddell seal is 10 ft long, the Leopard seal is 11.5 ft long, and the elephant seal can get up to 20ft long! After we measured the seals we compared the length. I wish I would have had my camera on me because it was really neat to see how long the seals are compared to us and each other.

Since Wednesday was the first day we had every one back, we decided to have a catch up period so that everyone would have the information on the penguins that we have covered. Later on the students will be making life size penguins!

Today we learned about the Chinstrap penguin. It is really easy to distinguish between the other penguins because it has a black strap under its chin. It has a black beak and pink feet. The Chinstrap penguin lay two eggs and live on the Sandwich Islands. One colony is said to have a population of 10 million Chinstrap penguins! Chinstraps are 28 inches tall and weigh 9 pounds.

Tomorrow we are going to learn about our last penguin, the Emperor Penguin. Tomorrow we are also having our Valentine's party!!! It should be a very fun day. I'll try to remember to take pictures.

Penguins!

Another week has flown by! On Monday we learned about our first penguin, the Rockhopper. Rockhopper penguins live in the Falkland Islands. They are about 18 inches tall and weigh 5-6 pounds. Rockhoppers have red eyes and yellow feathers that stick out from the side of their heads. They have orange beaks and feet. Rockhopper penguins lay two eggs but only incubate one. The students measured string and cut it the height of Rockhopper peguins. They also added together the weights of cans to figure out how heavy a Rockhopper penguin would feel.

King penguins were our focus on Tuesday. King penguins live on South Georgia Island.They are beautiful with their yellow and orange chest and head feathers. We found out that Kings are a lot bigger than Rockhoppers. King penguins are 36 inches tall (3 feet) and weigh 30 pounds! They lay only one egg every two years because they care for their chicks until they are 13 months old. The students meared the height of the King penguin with string.

On Wednesday we discussed penguin predators and made an Antarctic food web. We had a really great class discussion on the importance of krill as a food source.

Thursday we sorted characteristics of the Rockhopper and the King Penguins. We also played a math game similar to old maid only it was called help, a skua.

The Little Blue penguin was introduced on Friday. It sure is cute! The Little Blue Penguin lives at the bottom of Australia and New Zealand. People in those regions like to watch the little blue come to shore. Little Blue penguins look exactly as the sound. They have bluish-grey feathers, yellow eyes, and pink feet! Little Blue penguins are 16 inches tall and weigh 2-3 pounds. They lay two eggs in burrows that they dig for their nests. Little blues are even smaller than Rockhoppers.

Next week we are going to learn about three more penguins and seals. It should be pretty exciting.

Antarctic Ice Inquiry

On Friday, January 30th, we learned about the three stages of matter: solids, liquids, and gas. We used the water cycle as examples of the three stages. Water is a liquid, ice is a solid, and steam is a gas. Antarctica is covered by ice that is a mile to two miles thick! Some of the ice sheets stick out over the ocean where the end of the ice sheet is actually floating on the ocean's surface forming an ice shelf. The Ross ice shelf is about the size of Texas and the biggest ice shelf in Antarctica. In 2000, a piece of the ice shelf broke off that was almost as big as Connecticut. We were wondering if the ice would melt faster in the ocean or on land? We also were curious how melting icebergs affect the ocean.

We conducted an experiment to try to answer our questions. We had one container with water in it and one that had frozen solid ice. The students felt the temperature of the water and it felt luke-warm. Then they added five ice cubes to each container. We noticed that the water level rose when we added the ice cubes. Then we waited for the ice cubes to melt.

We discovered that the ice melted faster in the container with water than the container that had ice. We also noticed that the water level was higher when the ice cubes had melted. The students felt the water again and the water felt colder.

We learned that if the Antarctic ice were to melt it would ruin the habitat for many animals as well as raise the ocean level flooding many islands and land near the sea. The ocean temperature could get colder, potentially harming ocean life in temperate regions.

What a Week!

We have been so busy this week I haven't had time to update the blog. For the past three days we have been working on making a mural of Antarctica. We have been very busy making seals, Orcas, and Penguins to go in our icy mural. To make sure that our mural was realistic, we looked in books to see what animals we might find, what they look like and what the scenery of Antarctica looks like. Our mural is still not finished, but I took some
work-in-progress pictures.










The students carefully looked at the pictures of the animals they were making.

I thought that the animals turned out so great that I had to take a picture of them before they went on the mural. I think the penguins might be my favorite. They all turned out so nice!

The Orcas and Seals also turned out really cute.





We did not have time to finish gluing our animals onto the mural today, so we will have to finish that on Monday. The Antarctic mural is up in the hallway outside of class. If you do not have time to come by and see it I will post pictures of the finished product. Here is what it looks like penguin-less:

I had to take two pictures of the mural because it is so big. For some reason I am having trouble getting the images to overlap, but you can see the general idea. On Monday we will add the penguins!

Journey to Antarctica

Oh my, what a magical day! As we were finishing up our passports it started snowing big, fluffy, beautiful flakes. The ground was white, covered with a thin layer of snow. This made us very excited but once it was lunch time the snow had melted. But that's ok because today we are traveling to Antarctica! We handed Mrs. Sisto our boarding passes and found seats on the plane. It is a very long flight to Antarctica, all the way down to the bottom of the earth. While we were on the plane we went on a virtual tour of McMurdo Station, the largest community on Antarctica. Scientists from all over the world meet in McMurdo to share ideas. We learned that all our waste (recycling, food scraps, garbage) has to be flown out of Antarctica to other countries like New Zealand. We also learned that it is summer in Antarctica right now. We checked the weather and it is only twenty-six degrees fahrenheit in McMurdo and it is summer! Then we wrote down what we brought with us on our journey. For about the next month we are going to be scientists studying ice, penguins, and other creatures that live in Antarctica.

North Pole South Pole

Today was the first day of our Antarctica unit and what an exciting day it was! The first lesson in the unit is understanding how the North Pole and the South Pole are different. We made a list of what we thought we knew about the North Pole and then a list of what we thought we knew about the South Pole.



We looked at a world map, a globe, and learned mnemonic phrases for the cardinal directions like never eat soggy waffles or never eat shredded wheat. Then we read a book called North Pole South Pole by Nancy Smiler Levinson. After the book we filled out a Venn diagram about how the North Pole and South Pole are similar or different.


We learned that ice, snow, seals, whales, and sea birds are at both poles. In the South Pole, Antarctica, there are penguins, midge, and scientists. The south pole is the coldest place in the world. It is summer during January. The South Pole is land surrounded by water. The North Pole, the Arctic, is where polar bears, walrus, fox, wolves, caribou, snow rabbits, and owls live. People are native to the North Pole, but scientists also study their. The North Pole is water (covered by ice) surrounded by land.


We also finished our penguin math folders and began making our passports to Antarctica! Tomorrow we are going to finish our passports and take off on our journey to study penguins and the other Animals of Antarctica.