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!).