Dear PTO... Thank You!!!

Dear McDole PTO,

This amazing year is coming to a close and Room 222 wanted to make sure we thanked you for all you did for us this year. Thank you for the fun lunches, dances, flings, special teacher lunches and support. 

We also want to say a huge, "THANK YOU" for your generosity towards our classroom. With your donation towards books, Room 222 was able to have a 2013-2014 First Reads Club.  

A First Reads Club is an exclusive club in which the members get to be the first kids to read a new book. The new books are all lined up for all to see and I do a quick book talk about each book. Then each student gets come up one at a time to pick their first read. Once they have read their book, they get to place a permanent label in the book so that all future Room 222 kiddos will know which former students previewed that book for them. We have many books in our current classroom library that were first reads for siblings of several of our current students. 

Here is a glimpse at our 2013-2014 First Reads Club sponsored by the McDole PTO:

Again, thank you for all you do for McDole. 

My Movie from LBright on Vimeo.

Guess our Insect Jobs!!!

Welcome to our new game called...

Here is how it goes...

1. Watch the video

2. Decide which group matches each job

*Population Control

*Decomposers

*Soil Tillers

*Pollinators

*Producers

3. Leave us a comment or tweet us (@mrsbrightmcdole) with your answers. 

4. We will get back to you to let you know how you did. 

Insect Jobs from LBright on Vimeo.

Can't wait to hear from you!

An Exciting, Nature-Filled Day!

Each day in Room 222 is an adventure!

Check out what was crawling around McDole's playground today!

So, what is a 1st grade teacher to do when something this cool in in our school?????

Wonder about it, of course!

We took a museum walk through the office to meet our visitor then immediately returned to the room to begin gathering our thoughts. 

We compared it to other turtles we know. 

We studied it's picture. 

We jotted our thoughts.

Here is a Padlet wall that shares all of our learning: 
http://padlet.com/10068/mcdoleturtle


We also said "Farewell" to our Room 222 butterflies today. GF raised them well and now they are ready for the world. 

GF felt them flutter on her finger...

She found safe places for all of them to live...

She also took charge during our "butterfly emergency"!

Great job GF! Thank you for sharing your Genius Hour project with all of us!

Lastly,

Here is a little project that we have been working on. We reviewed a new product this week (our intro to opinion writing). Check out our thoughts on the Gripcase:

Gripcase from LBright on Vimeo.

A Glimpse at What's to Come

I can't believe we are in the last stretch of 1st Grade!

Are we slowing down?

Goodness no!

We are just getting started!

Here is a glimpse at what's to come...

Published Informational Books: (password in email)

The two gentlemen in this video are showcasing their research books that are a product of their inquiry group progress. These are works in progress but you can see excellence in the making from two of our most passionate writers. 

Published Books from LBright on Vimeo.

First Grade Fairy Tales Plays:

At the end of May, these amazing kiddos will get the opportunity to showcase their knowledge of retelling a story and true understanding of character, plot and main ideas, through the act of performance. 

Much more information will come home in just a few days. Until then, please enjoy the video that kicked it all off on Friday:

My Movie 2 from LBright on Vimeo.

Have a Great Week!

The Shedd Aquarium

It was a long but wonderful day at The Shedd Aquarium.

I am so proud of all of the KME students on their amazing behavior and exceptional learning. It was amazing to walk up to groups of KME students and hear them discussing the characteristics of the creatures they have been studying.

I would like to thank all of the parents who joined us on the trip today and all of the parents who prepped their kids before hand. It was clear that Room 222 was ready to be respectful and responsible citizens.

Here is a quick video clip sharing some of our experience today:

My Movie 3 from LBright on Vimeo.

As a team, we wanted to try something new this year to help keep all of our parents informed and entertained at home. We started our own Twitter hashtag (#kmeshedd) to help chronicle our day. We had many parents follow us on our Twitter accounts today and tweet us back!

I would really like to thank the parents and KME staff who signed up for twitter on the bus ride there. It was amazing to have KME parents join KME staff in our sharing of our journey.

Not on Twitter? Don't worry! There are two ways you can check out all of the tweets and pictures from our journey.

1. Twitter Link - https://twitter.com/search?f=realtime&q=%23kmeshedd&src=typd

My Favorite

2. Tweet Beam - Watch the tweets like a slideshow presentation - http://www.tweetbeam.com/show?query=%23kmeshedd

Thank you again to all of the parents of Room 222 for making today a success! 

Inquiry Groups Continued...

We are still swimming through our ocean research project. Our Inquiry Group approach is proving to be the perfect fit for our collaborative learners.

(see our first Inquiry Groups post here)

Check out our progress!

The Coelacanth group is using a video to gather more information and then charting it on their research poster. 

The Stingray Group in pouring over a new book hoping to add to their knowledge base.

Today's session was based around finding information in articles. We used a strategy called "Drawing through the Text" to help find and understand the information in our articles. 

Each member of the inquiry group used a different color highlighter to identify his/her sentence. Each group member read their sentence and drew a picture of the information learned. When all group members had collaboratively finished their drawings, they used them to retell the information in their article.

Next up on our list is to synthesize the information from all of our different resources and decide what it all means. 

Room 222 Friends and Family will be able to view pieces of these projects at our McDole Open House on Thursday night! 

The kids can't wait to share their learning. 

See you then!

Inquiry Groups - Ocean Creature Style

Collaboration is the name of the game in Room 222. We have based most of our year around making sure that we truly understand good collaboration, what it means and how to improve it if we don't see/hear it happening. 

So when ocean research time rolled around, I couldn't wait to try this out with Inquiry Groups. My model for this process is a professional book by Stephanie Harvey and Harvey Daniels:

We have two major goals to accomplish during our Inquiry Journey. 

1. Truly understand the research process and how to synthesize information from multiple sources. 

2. Work collaboratively in our small groups as leaders, active participants and positive, engaged, energetic learners.

Here is a great example of goal #2 in action during the coding process:

Inquiry Groups from LBright on Vimeo.

Here is how we began:

Each student started his/her Inquiry Journey by choosing an ocean creature (from a pre-determined list) that he or she was curious about and had little background knowledge on. 

Once our collaborative groups were formed, we got right to work gathering our Background Knowledge and Questions about our new creatures. 

Once we had our thoughts jotted down, we talked about coding our thoughts to help with better understanding. 

We used this guide when coding with our groups:

Then we began the research process.

Each one of these steps is modeled first with our class creature, the Killer Whale. 

We started our research process with our old and trusted friend, Pebblego.com

Each Inquiry Group used a laptop to travel to Pebblego.com as their first information source. 

Then we charted our new information on our learning posters.

Our last step this week was to start searching for our next resource. Kidrex.org is always helpful when searching for kid-appropriate sources. 

The learning will continue this week, as we use books, videos and articles to help us research and find more possible answers to our questions and wonders.