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| This is real: "Mom and Dad, can we please make this at home?" Families: Trails of snot may be at your door. Beware! (It was probably us learning about our beautiful body systems.) |
Homework: Along with reading 20 minutes each night, please consider the following:
Monday: Digestion Activity
Tuesday: Please choose one Spelling Activity
Wednesday: IXL Math J1, J6, J7 and feel free to play around in Data and Graphs (section J); please be sure to complete the entire activity though, so you know where you are.
Thursday: Study for tomorrow's spelling quiz & Circulatory Activity; bring a pumpkin in if you want to carve it during Friday's Scary night
Friday: Please keep your costumes at home and save them for the evening; Drink water. Seriously. All the candy and sugary substances (possibly even beaver butt juice) dehydrates you. See you at Scary Night, or not... muhahahah!
Putting our food research into a fun, presentable form. Sometimes facts are just... [you fill in the word.]
Quizzes on posters? Yes.
Hard at work.
No, we are not asleep.
We are deep in thought, as we listen to "We're are going to be friends" by The White Stripes.
...And did you know great readers make meaningful connections and feel what they read? We call it, REAL reading.
We shared our text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections using our Schema Thinking Stems. After listening to the song twice, we listened a third time with the lyrics. What deep and varied connections, did we make!
The day has come. Our new knowledge being shared about our in-depth food research.
Yes. I move quickly because dancing during a presentation is fun. It captivated my audience.
Behold... Let me share with you! Need I say more?
Not only a poster, but I decided to make game which reflects my understanding of the challenges of farming and food distribution. One step forward for cold milk, and two steps back if my truck broke down.
Poster and board game. Let's play and see how closely you paid attention to my presentation.
Some of us went to Thailand and got a new water bottle. Oh, wait... that was me!
How would you organize data so it makes sense to others and is easy to analyze?
So, numbers are all around us; however, data is, too. As blossoming statisticians we dive head-first into a world of data and how it is represented around us. Let's begin...
First, data can be collected, recorded, and then organized.
How did you organize, or visually represent, your data? We already know of bar graphs, line graphs, pictographs, frequency tables, pie charts, line plots, and stem and leaf plots. Even more, organizing our data from least to greatest helps us look at median, mode, and range when analyzing it and looking for patterns.
The debate is on! Which is the most "appropriate" and efficient method of organizing your data?
Henry, the Antarctic Explorer, visited us and shared his experiences as well as his love of Marine Biology!
Some of us even got his autograph, after we tried on some of his Antarctic gear!
What do iPads, Britannica Image Quest, the smallest living things on Earth (according to 4th grade knowledge) have in common? Cells! Our bodies are made of cells, tissues, organs, and systems!
Wait?! How did we get here?
Let me tell you a story of how we started with a question: "What do you we want to know about WHO WE ARE?" We wonder about many things, but we have some common themes in our responses - humans, body, inside, and outside. In taking ownership and really deciding what we wan to study, we each wrote our own central idea. After eliminating, narrowing, and broadening them we agreed on one central idea: Human body systems work together for the human body to stay healthy.
We created an adult version of our central idea: Our bodies consist of systems that work together for us to remain healthy. This was all brought together by philosophical debates and discussions prompted from a phrase "parts work together so the whole can function." We looked at different systems, such as a bicycle, schools, playgrounds, and even our classroom to examine how "pieces," working together, play a significant role in helping the entire system function, or work, to full-fill a purpose.
Statistics, our study of data, must go on!
Here we discussed what "family-size" meant and came to a consensus.
We surveyed each other and, again, represented our data in a unique way.
One must understand the features, or Conventions of Non-Fiction Texts, such as "gross" books about our bodies in order to fully understand our complex body systems. As such, we eased into the world by analyzing just how author's use diagrams, labels, photographs, cutaways (ask about Mr. Mike cutting an apple in half with scissors. Instead of, "That's so cool!" I got "That's wasteful, Mr. Mike!" I guess some things will continue to live on from our food unit:)
I guess photographs can be scary and funny at the same time.
The glossary, index, and table and contents and are just a few ways author's organize non-fiction texts, but also help us find and determine important information, quickly.
Hey, why are you holding that tape measure? Oh, because your measuring each other's height and organizing the data in a unique and efficient way! Wait, knees bent, or not?
One to measure, one to be measured, and one to check the measuring. Human error, physical or mental miscalculations, can definitely cause problems with our data. They can even create false out-liers, or data that really "stands-out" from the rest of our data.
Determining Importance is a tough skill. Author, Anthony J. D'Angelo, once said, "In your thirst for knowledge, be sure to not drown in all the information."
Sure, feeling the words on the page is important and makes learning enjoyable. What happens when the text is complicated and has so many BIG words?! How do we sort through all the information to find just the right stuff, the important facts and what not?
We use the skills and strategies we know already, plus a new strategy. First, we remember to use our schema, ask questions when we are hazy (i.e. confused), use non-fiction text features as clues for what is important, and now we can use our new strategy of Determining Importance and new thinking stems that match it. Basically, we look for what matters most!
Here we are exploring our body unit books to determine what is most important to us and in the text. We even used our Determining Importance Thinking Stems in book clubs. Who knew? They seem to work with any type of text!
