Work, Work, Work

Here is a scene from yesterday as we were furiously working to finish everything for Stories of Our Culture our Multicultural Night theme this year and all the other projects we have going right now:

 Winter Writing Assessments must be finished!

 It's nearly March.  We need new Calendar markers.

 "I must finish my Non-Fiction Notebook study.  Here's a table of contents I found."

 Almost finished with those Tree Frogs.

 Rain Forest Field Journal work time

 I Come From... poem rough draft writing.

 "Teacher leave us alone we are writing."

 Rain Forest Strata signage in the works.

 A really exciting book.  The boys needed some exploring time.

 Look at this guilty face. I wonder what he was up to with the pencil sharpener...

 I even took over a table with all my assessments and all of our projects as I frantically typed up poems and conferenced with writiers.  Sorry Blue table!

This is a one minute snapshot of what yesterday looked like.  I seriously grabbed my camera and walked a large circle around the classroom as we worked.  No wonder I'm so exhausted at the end of the day.  I hope to see a lot of families at Multicultural Night tonight.  I'll post pictures of our I Come From... poems as soon as I can.  They are AMAZING!

Understory

The Forest Floor

As you may know, the Rain Forest is made up of layers.  For our scientific purposes we are calling them strata.  There are four main layers.  As a class we have discovered there are more than that but for our purposes we are sticking with the four major ones.  First up, on the bottom...

The Forest Floor

We built it in the entry way.  We (well Coach our fabulous helper) stuck black paper on the wall to simulate the ground then built roots.  We figured out what things that live there then drew them: fungi, worms, insects, and lots of leaves.

Next Step...
The Understory

Research

We have been doing a lot of research, building schema, and connecting knowledge.  You should hear how everyone continues to make connections to what they learned about bats.  Adaptations still seem to be a bit of a mystery, but that is what research is for.

I love this discovery...

A walking tree!  I was surprised too.  Everyone is equipped with small writing pads to write down surprises like this.  

I even got in on it with these cool 3D glasses, but there wasn't much about the Rain Forest in this book.  That is supposed to be my serious reading face but I was trying really hard not to smile.

And to end this post, look at this face of surprise.  There really is no way I can explain the joy of this moment, or capture how much fun it was through this picture.

I don't know if you noticed the GIANT spider on that opened page.  I absolutely love this photograph.  It has convinced to to make a greatest hits page at the end of the year.

A day of caring

Happy belated Valentines everyone.  

We started off with a quick study of Picasso's Rose Period.  Then practiced some techniques on these beautifully cut hearts.

Don't they look great?

It also happened to be "Wacky Dress Up Day"

   

I love these shoes.  I got into the spirit to by pulling out my hot orange leg warmers.  Believe it or not they don't really get a lot of use.  As you can see though, it was still business as usual during reading.

I believe it was this guys first Valentines Day.  

Like everyone else, he really enjoyed the party we had in the afternoon.

A moment of Zen

This is Room 9.

New Years Resolution...FAIL

Last night as I was lying in bed listening to the wind screaming around my house, my brain heavy after a long day of school, gym, cooking and cleaning my eyes shot open, "I forgot to blog!"  I'm only a month into the year and I have already let my resolutions slip!  Well here is what we have been up to today.  We've been busy:

 Tracking our thinking and learning new Rain Forest vocabulary.

 Figuring out where Rain Forests are.

 Talking about Rain Forests.

 Using and finding new vocabulary.

 Working together.

We are rocking out to some Pandora, and generally having a great time learning.  It's a typical chaotic Tuesday morning!