Are You a Shark? Turtle? or Owl?

As we round out our inquiry into how we can communicate our ideas, feelings, and needs, we've spent some time looking at how our communication skills can affect our daily lives and relationships. This week, we met "Sumbissive Turtle", "Aggressive Shark" and "Assertive Owl". These three animals are symbolic of the types of communicators we can choose to be. "Submissive Turtles" are usually shy and quiet, and as a result don't always get their needs met. Over time, they can become quite sad because they don't have the voice they wish they had to be able to speak up. "Aggressive Sharks" are more dominating and pushy. They tend to act without thinking first, and often put themselves before others. "Assertive Owls" listen and observe. They speak with confidence, state their needs clearly, and do their best to think before they act. In the ideal world, we would all be "Assertive Owls" with wise communication skills. The boys really responded to looking at interpersonal communication skills through these three characters. They immediately recognized that they are symbols used to help us understand the ways we can communicate. Through role play, we explored pretending to be these three characters in different scenarios that happen to us daily at school. It was very interesting to watch the boys explore and realize that they have choices when they communicate, and that sometimes we have to be risk-takers to have our needs met. Most conflict comes from not having needs met. We will be practicing "I need..." statements in our class as we try to become more and more like "Assertive Owl" in our every day interactions with each other.
Today we mixed borax and hot water and will see what happens over the weekend to the pipe cleaner snowflakes we've got suspended in our solutions. If all the scientific variables are correct, the boys should arrive on Monday morning to find that the pipe cleaners are covered in beautiful crystals. They sure are loving putting their inquiring scientist hats on. Next week, we'll spend some time changing the variables to figure out why borax and water make crystals (and will have some gorgeous ornaments for your Christmas trees to boot!).

As a Matter of Fact...

Over the last couple of weeks we've been conducting matter experiments in order to understand the properties of solids, liquids and gases. We started out by pretending we were the molecules inside solids, then liquids, then gases. This helped us to understand what the matter is like and how the distance between molecules helps to determine the state of matter. We've also been pouring liquids and solids and observing the differences in the properties as they "pour". Yes, you can pour blocks, but they don't change like water does to fit the shape of the container. This past week, we've been exploring mass through matter. We've discussed the properties of solids and put them on the scale to see which one is heaver (marbles vs. rocks). We also compared our heavy rock with water, and in the end, water won the day, proving that both liquids and solids have mass. The boys were amazed that a container of water could have more mass than a rock that beat out a bag of marbles. Today, we tried to determine whether air has mass. The definitive answer was yes, but when we put a packing pouch without air on one side of the balance scale, and a packing pouch sealed with air on the other side, our predictions did not all come true. This was the perfect opportunity to illustrate that a good scientist isn't always right when they make their best guess. It's all about what we can learn when we check our guesses. We also blew up a balloon with hot air (which by the way, I am full of), and found that it had more mass than the balloon with the cooler air in it. Hmmm, we wondered. How can this be so? So we googled, and yes indeed, cold air should tip the scales more than hot air, but in our case it did not. "Maybe the internet is wrong, Mrs. de Hoog," one of the boys remarked. Well, this led us to a discussion about reliable sources of information, and we decided that the U.S. Department of Energy should be a reliable source. So, we began switching the variables up a bit, and will continue to do so to help us understand the mass of air. We decided that for now, our results are inconclusive, which in the world of science, means we have more guessing and checking to do. Ah, the beauty of science...

The Fine Art of Communicating

We are delving into our communication inquiry, and comic fever has caught on! Although I hadn't planned to examine comic strips as a way of communicating, that's exactly what we are doing. This is the beauty of inquiry based teaching and learning. Honoring student interests and harnessing the opportunity to take advantage of the "teachable moment" validates the boys' desire to want to know more about something that has caught their attention. We've spent time comparing comic books with picture books and thinking about how to tell a story with a logical beginning, middle and end through pictures, speech and thought bubbles, and exclamations. We even talked about "onomatopeoia"! The boys are very proud of their work and are learning important lessons about communicating clearly for an audience. On top of all this writing, we are also exploring communication devices, and learning about Helen Keller. Over the next two weeks we will explore braille, sign language, non-verbal communication, and world alphabets.
Thank you for coming to your son's learning conference. I was so proud of how well the boys shared their work with you. They were confident communicators who expressed their learning clearly. Student learning conferences are very important in helping the boys develop confidence and pride as they reflect on their learning and productivity. We will be looking at your "stars and wishes" and will work hard to make your "wish" come true before our next learning conferences in February.