Do you know how the Earth has changed over millions of years?

Posted on March 4, 2011 by carriegelson

What do we know about how the Earth has changed over time? Do we have the background knowledge (schema) to talk about these changes or do we need to do a lot of new learning? Let’s find out!

The question: How has the Earth changed over millions of years?

The task: take paper and felts and go write down what you know!

So here is what we think we know as of today.

Some definite themes and big discussion about:

“Something came crashing to Earth and killed the dinosaurs!” “Yeah! It was a ball!” “Not a ball! A meteor.” “No, an asteroid!” “Huh?’

Some people had a vague idea that the continents were not the same shape as they are today.

Every piece of land are together

The land was connected.

Spelling was not a priority in this exercise!

We definitely knew that some creatures have roamed the Earth that are not here today.

Other interesting discussion: Is there more water now? Or less? What about trees? Animals? When did people get here exactly? Is there more light now?

So we need some more information! We need a great book!

My son came home from school talking about a great book (you’ve got to love that as a Mom and a teacher!) that his teacher had read to him (thanks Ms. Conklin!) . This is how I came across The Pebble in my Pocket – A History of our Earth written by Meredith Hooper and illustrated by Chris Coady. This is a long book and took several sittings to complete it – especially because we had to stop frequently for great questions and discussion. My students loved this book and I loved reading it to them as they were so passionate with their comments and questions. It is pretty serious business when we go back millions and millions of years!

This book takes us on a 480 million year journey. We follow a piece of rock that formed as a result of a volcano and travelled through time to end up in a little girl’s pocket. On this amazing journey we learn how the earth has changed in many dramatic ways over time.

Great comments and questions I just have to share:

Kevin interrupted a few pages in, after finding out that rocks become smoother as they slide down mountains, travel through rivers, get battered by waves etc.

“Wait! I’m going to infer something! If a rock is bumpy it’s not from many years ago because the smooth ones are from long ago.”

We read about how there were no plants or trees at one point and Jeremiah wondered: “Back then, if you were in space, what would the Earth have looked like, what colours would you see?” (Is this not the most brilliant question?)

Miami was worried. “Ms. Gelson, you told us that trees give oxygen so if there were no trees, how could there be oxygen? Nothing could live!”

Kevin jumped in, “Wait Miami I’ve got something for you! There were little green plants and they could have given oxygen!”

Eddy started thinking as we discussed why the dinosaurs might be extinct. Some people thought a meteor hitting the Earth was the reason. “So if a meteor hit, and smoke didn’t let the sun through, the plants would die and the dinosaurs would die because they had nothing to eat and they would be too cold right?”

And the big, big question we had over and over again. “I know there were cave people but just how did those cave people get there?”

When we finished the book, we did a timeline exercise – sorting when different life existed on Earth. (i.e. 155 mya Small running Dinosaur Compsognathus) Then we grabbed felts and paper again and tried to write down new things we learned.

Now we have a better idea of how the Earth has changed.

Students included many things on their lists, including:

land was formed by volcanoes
fish became land creatures
many ice ages occurred
flowers grew after plants and trees
many creatures are now extinct like mammoths
the same land was sometimes frozen

So much to still learn, but we have a richer understanding thanks to this fantastic book!

The Great Apes

Posted on March 2, 2011 by carriegelson

Apes. Orangutan, Chimp, Bonobo, Gorilla – these great apes are fascinating. They are so like us! At this time in the world we need to protect them to ensure they have places free from being hunted and free to live in peace. What did we learn about these great apes today? What are we still wondering? What do we want to research?

Ape is a visually stunning book! A book to pore over again and again marvelling at the details – both visual and written. Vicky White’s close up portraits and lifelike illustrations fascinated us while Martin Jenkins’ text provided so much new information it was difficult to turn a page without endless questions being tossed around the room.

This was the perfect text to practice questioning with non-fiction text in small groups. First we listened to the story and listed key questions on our individual notepads. Some very fascinating facts that sparked a lot of discussion:

Chimpanzees poke a hole into a termite mound with a long blade of grass and then lick off the termites! Some people thought they were using the grass kind of like a straw. Other people wondered if they shared. Many people thought it would be pretty gross to have bugs crawling around in your mouth!
Orangutans love to eat the smelly durian fruit!
Chimps travel in gangs and hunt down monkeys. “Gangs!?” This seemed very dramatic. “Do they just chase the monkeys or do they actually eat them?” one little horrified voice asked.

We then took our questions to share in a group of four. Each student took turns sharing a question and the group helped decide where to include it on our questioning sheet. Was it a question we found the answer to? Was it a question where we thought we could infer using the schema we already have about animals and the world? Or was it a question where we felt that more research was needed?

Which questions made the lists? A sample below . . .

Questions we had but then found out the answer as we read on:

How long do gorillas live? At least 40 or 50 years.
Where do the apes sleep? In nests on the ground or in trees
What do apes eat? Some eat fruit, some eat termites.
Are any of these apes extinct? No!
How many species of apes are there? Five species in the world – including us!

Questions that we didn’t find the answers to but we can try to infer:

What are the predators of apes? We think humans who hunt them and big cats because they run fast and can catch them.
When the chimps fight with other chimps, do they die? We think they might if they get really hurt. Maybe they could get an infection from a bite or bad scratch.
What kinds of parasites do they have? Maybe fleas because they have fur.

Questions which need more research:

Which of the apes is most aggressive?
How are Apes related to people?
Can a chimp sense its predators?
Can apes swim?
What are the differences between males and females?

It was fantastic to see students so engaged with their questions and talking together to make inferences and discuss new learning.

Thank you to BLG who sent in this book to another primary class a few weeks ago. This book will be a very popular book in our library!

Stories that came our way today

Posted on February 16, 2011 by carriegelson

Our classroom read aloud mid morning was an information story book to practice asking questions and inferring from our background knowledge.

Written by Vivian French (author of many favourite information story books) and illustrated by Charlotte Voake, Caterpillar Caterpillar is all about a little girl learning about the caterpillar’s development through the help of her patient and knowledgeable grandfather. We realized our background knowledge related to insects has really grown because of all of our research about walking sticks (our classroom pets). We had lots of questions about the caterpillars shedding their skin and wondered if like stick bugs, they ate their skin? Do they have suction cups on their legs to be able to travel on the underside of leaves? Are the butterfly eggs sticky to stay stuck to the leaves? They must be because they don’t fall off in the rain. But then somebody else pointed out that maybe the eggs are only laid on the underside of leaves to protect them. Can caterpillars spray a substance to keep enemies away like some stick bugs can? Great questions and discussion today!

In the afternoon, we walked to Strathcona Library to visit Ms. Hong and have a story time at our public library! What a great way to fit our daily 30 minutes of physical activity into the school day! And . . . what a wonderful story!

Ms. Hong read us Orange Peel’s Pocket written by Rose Lewis and cheerfully illustrated by Grace Zong. Chang Ming goes in search of answers to the question – What is China like? by wandering into shops and businesses where she can learn more about her cultural heritage. Everyone slips something mysterious into her pocket (how fun to guess what each item might be when Ms. Hong read aloud!) – a poem, a peony, a recipe for noodle soup, etc. Now Orange Peel (Chang Ming) can share her heritage with her classmates.

A lovely end to our day. . . When we returned to class, Edwin shared a drum given to him by his grandfather and showed us a rattle carved from a special tree where eagles nested and gifted to him by his uncle. Sharing of his stories and culture – thank you Edwin!

Old Mother Bear inspires lots of questions

Posted on January 18, 2011 by carriegelson

Division 5 has been practicing asking questions as we listen to a story. Armed with our pencils and mini notebooks, we gather at the carpet to listen to great information story books like Old Mother Bear by Victoria Miles and illustrated by Molly Bang.

So far we have read about how the mother Grizzly tunnelled a den out of the mountainside to sleep through the winter and birth her cubs. The cubs are born and nurse and snuggle with their mother until they all emerge from the den in the spring and begin searching for food.

A sample of the great questions we had (and who asked them) as we read the first half of the book:

How do bears dig the den? (Manny)

Does it hurt when the mother feeds? (Miami)

How do the mother bears make milk? (Hajhare)

How do they feed from their mother if they can’t see? (Josiah)

How many babies do they have at one time? (Lisa)

Where is the Dad? (Hailey)

When do they leave their Mom? (Jeremiah)

How do the cubs know not to hurt each other when they play fight? (Edwin)

How long can a bear survive without food? (Ricky)

We look forward to finishing the story this week!

Exploring unique animal relationships

Posted on November 10, 2010 by carriegelson

We have been reading this fantastic book by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page called How to Clean a Hippopotamus and are learning all about symbiotic relationships – today we read about the oxpecker, also known as a tickbird and how it hangs out with some pretty large animals doing a very important job.

We drew some pictures of what we learned today and tried to explain how all the animals in a symbiotic relationship benefit.

Gary explains: The giraffe lets the oxpecker on its back because the oxpecker eats the parasite and the oxpecker warns the giraffe when the giraffe predator is near! The oxpecker likes to go on to the giraffe’s back because it eats the parasites.

Ricky writes: The oxpecker is a really nice bird. It eats ticks from the giraffe. Ticks are small small parasites that use your body as a home. But ticks don’t go only on giraffes! They go on rhinos, buffalos, zebras, giraffes and deers. So the oxpecker can have lots of food. These animals can’t get the ticks out of their body because they’re not like us. So the oxpecker can help by eating. These are African animals.

Scott explains: The oxpecker helps the giraffe by eating the parasites. Also they scream and flap their wings to warn the giraffe so the giraffe could run away or kick predators with their legs. Because the oxpecker loves eating parasites, it spends time on large animals. Scott also provided some definitions: A parasite lives on a host. They are annoying. A tick is a parasite. A predator means that they hunt animals. They hunt them so they could eat them.

We can’t wait to read about more unique animal relationships in this book!

Let’s Read and Find out Science Books

Posted on October 31, 2010 by carriegelson

Our reading group has been exploring many books in the classroom. This past week, they really enjoyed reading some of the books in the Let’s Read and Find out Science bin. In pairs or on their own they selected a book, wrote down some questions before reading, took turns reading out loud to their partner and wrote down some of the most interesting facts in a web. We all learned so much about a wide variety of topics. Living things were a popular thing to study: frogs and tadpoles, fireflies, night animals, and dolphins. Others explored different science topics such as what makes a magnet, thunder and lightning and the sun. Check out some of our work!

Josiah’s choice was The Sun, Our Nearest Star

His questions before he read:

If you walk on the sun, will you crumble?
How far is the sun?
What is the sun made of?

Some of the interesting facts he included in his web:

Other stars are farther than the sun
A spaceship will turn into gasses if it gets too near the sun
It will take more than 3 years to reach the sun

Jenny and Scott chose to read this book:

Jenny and Scott’s questions when they looked at the cover:

What is lightning made of?
When does lightning come?
What happens when lightning zaps you?

Some facts from their web:

People used to think lightning was the fiery finger of an angry God
Watch storms from a safe place
A car is safe because when lightning hits it, the electricity goes through the car and not through you

We have many more of the Let’s Read and Find out Science titles in our class and predict that they will be popular books to choose during independent reading time!