Week 28 - Gardening and Diorama Presentations

/

This week we put the finishing touches on our Oregon native tribe dioramas and finished writing the notes for our presentations. We added labels to our Oregon topographic map to show where each of our tribes was traditionally located. We also took time to practice presenting our dioramas to each other and with one of our parent volunteers. By the time Wednesday rolled around, the Sea Lions were confident and ready to do their presentations for groups of the Otter students. I was so impressed with the students’ hard work, creativity, and speaking skills. They were poised, knowledgeable, and did a great job of teaching the younger students information about the Native American tribe they had researched.

Mr. Mark joined us and the Otters class one afternoon to teach about the six gardens in our Cedar Classroom: the meadow, the pollinator garden, the bioswale, the fern garden, the pond, and the roof garden. We learned about the types of native plants that are growing in these gardens, including camas and wapato. On another afternoon, Mr. Mark helped each of us plant additional native plants in our gardens.

On Friday, we were invited to join the Otters class for a gallery walk to look at students’ rock collections (as that class kicks off their geology unit of study). Some of the Sea Lions students also brought their own collections and we loved exploring and sharing these cool rocks with each other.

In math this week, we learned how to create line graphs and line plots, and how these graphs can help us visualize data and answer questions about the information. The Sea Lions worked with partners to come up with a question (such as “How many minutes do you read each day?”), gather data from classmates, and then graph that data on a line plot. We also enjoyed learning a new board game called “Tsuro” which helps strengthen our strategy and spatial reasoning skills. Finn was happy to receive a reply letter from his new pen pals in the Otters class. Just for fun, we created a paper chain to count down the days of school left in the year. We also worked as a team to put together the new art drying rack that was ordered for our classroom.

We were very excited to welcome a new student into our Sea Lions classroom this week! Ella attended the ELC in the past and has decided to rejoin our school for the remainder of this year. We’re happy to have another friend to add to our small group, and we enjoyed getting to know her better and showing her our class routines.

Below are additional pictures that Mr. Mark was kind enough to share from the diorama presentations.

Week 27 - Dioramas and the Start of Spring

/

The Sea Lions continued creating dioramas to show the shelters, foods, tools, etc. that were used by the Native American tribes from Oregon we’ve been researching. These awesome dioramas include so many intricate details and additions, and the students have loved spending lots of focused time and effort working on their projects! We are writing descriptions of our dioramas and then we’ll be presenting them to the Otter class this next week. We also continued learning more details about the Kalapuya peoples, which includes the Atfalati tribe who lived locally in our region of the Willamette Valley. Some of the interesting facts we learned were about how they harvested camas and wapato for food, as well as how they set controlled forest fires each fall to help the native plants grow better the next year.

This week we also began an online program of typing lessons. Each Sea Lion student has an assigned day every week to practice their keyboarding skills and to learn how to use the proper fingers for each key. The students have been loving these lessons and are eager to put in extra time on the computer anytime their other work is finished early.

In math, we’ve finished up our fraction chapters and will be moving on to a short study on graphs. We wrote response letters to our pen pal friends early in the week, had a visit from the university’s OT students (some of them showed us yoga moves), and enjoyed a visit to the library on Friday. For April Fool’s Day, the Otters teachers surprised us with a pan of “brown E’s” which gave us all a good laugh (followed by some real brownies they were kind enough to share with us).

We’ve been enjoying the warmer and sunnier weather lately. The trees are blooming, the birds are visiting our Cedar Classroom, and the bees are buzzing. We’ve learned that many of the indigenous tribes from Oregon used a mortar and pestle to grind their foods, so some students have been creating their own “mortars and pestles” using sticks and wooden bowls during our outside choice time. In preparation for planting some new plants with Mr. Mark next week, the Sea Lions learned about mulch and did a science experiment to discover which type of material would make the best mulch to help retain water in the soil. We made predictions and then recorded our observations and the results we found. It turned out that plastic wrap made the best mulch because it was less porous (compared to newspaper or paper towels), so less water could escape when it evaporated.

Week 26 - Pi Day and Leprechaun Traps

/

The Sea Lions had a full and joyous week leading up to our Spring Break. We celebrated Pi Day on Monday with lots of fun math activities and by eating some pie. Ms. Ren led the Sea Lions and Otters in an exploration of circle measurements to learn about pi as a constant number (it doesn’t change regardless of how big or small a circle is). We learned about the fibonacci sequence and how those numbers are often found in nature. We enjoyed a variety of math centers with games or art activities. In the afternoon, the Sea Lions composed their own symphony of pi. Students were responsible for creating a unique sound to go with each of the digits 0-9. Then we “played” our sounds in the right order matching up with the digits in the number pi. You can listen to our symphony below.

We continued creating our dioramas to show what we’ve been learning about our assigned Native American tribes. We are getting close to finishing them, but most students need a bit more time.

We also spent several days engineering amazing traps to try and catch a leprechaun. Each student had a unique idea and took time to plan and troubleshoot as they built their traps. We were disappointed to not catch any leprechauns, but we enjoyed figuring out how they escaped our traps and thinking of improvements we could make next time.

Those pesky leprechauns sure had fun creating chaos in our classroom! The Sea Lions were excited to find chocolate coins left behind, and they had fun using our cameras to take photos of all the evidence and the mess the leprechauns made in our classroom. Since Thursday was also the last day of school before Spring Break we treated ourselves to fun activities throughout the day. For our Writer’s Workshop time, the Sea Lions worked on Mad Libs as a group and we had lots of laughs together seeing how silly the stories turned out to be. Some students brought in their favorite board games and card games from home and we enjoyed joining with the Otters to play games with each other. The Sea Lions did some extra spring cleaning in our classroom, and we finished our day with extra free choice time…and with lots of smiles as we headed out for our Spring Break vacation!

Weeks 24 and 25 - Native American Tribe Studies

/

We’ve continued studying the Native American tribes from Oregon. We learned that Forest Grove is on land that was traditionally the home of the Atfalati tribe who were part of the larger Kalapuya peoples. We learned about what a land acknowledgement is and why it is important to give honor to those tribes whose land we live on, and we watched some videos of indigenous people throughout North America reading their own land acknowledgements. Then the Sea Lions worked together to write a class land acknowledgement listing what we love about this area, how we benefit from the land, and how we will honor and protect this land we all share. Henry taught us how to use the speech-to-text feature in Google Docs and the whole class loved taking turns contributing their ideas to the typed document. The Sea Lions also worked together to design our land acknowledgement into a beautiful poster with a photo of our Oregon map as the background. We have also been reading and listening to traditional tribal legends about A Man Called Raven, Salmon Boy, and how Coyote created Willamette Falls, and a story about how the local tribes here used to catch lamprey eels at those same waterfalls. We learned about some of the traditional art designs used by the Coast Salish tribes (in the Washington coast area) and created art pieces of ravens and salmon inspired by that art style.

Each Sea Lion student selected one of the indigenous tribes from Oregon to be in charge of researching. We have been reading about our individual tribes and learning about the climate and environment where they lived, the types of shelters they built, foods they ate, clothing they wore, and tools they used. At the end of this week we began creating dioramas that will show what we’ve learned about our tribes. We are finding that there are some interesting similarities between tribes that lived in similar environments, but a lot of differences for those tribes that lived in the dryer regions of eastern Oregon. The students have been finding creative ways to make models of their shelters and tools for their dioramas, and it’s been fun to watch them being engineers and trying new ideas.

In Math, we finished up our chapter on adding and subtracting fractions, and now we’ve started a new chapter where we’re learning how to multiply fractions by whole numbers. Ms. Susan was surprised that the students are finding the lessons on multiplying fractions easier than the lessons on adding/subtracting fractions. We will continue to practice simplifying fractions and converting improper fractions into mixed numbers (i.e. 3/9 = 1/3 and 14/5 = 2⅘) as we build on our ability to compute with fractions.

We have been finding more opportunities to take our learning outside while the weather has been so lovely. The Sea Lions enjoyed practicing their cursive letters in the sandbox out in our Cedar Classroom, and we held our most recent book club discussions as well as free-choice reading outside on the grass. The students continue to love playing a variety of tag games with the Otters, as well as enjoying imaginative play together. On Friday we enjoyed a trip to the library too.

Ms. Susan made a big shift in our daily schedule and how we are doing our work each day. The Sea Lions are learning to be more independent and responsible for managing their own work as we prepare for the higher grades. Our new process is to gather as a group for certain parts of the day, such as for Content time, our daily Math lessons, or introducing a new writing assignment, but then we have several blocks of time each day that students get to do independent work. At the beginning of the day we go over the list of expectations and work that needs to be completed that day. Then students have blocks of independent work time when they get to choose what they want to work on first, or whether they want to tackle each assignment a little bit at a time. We tested the system out for a few days the previous week, then Ms. Susan surveyed each student to see how they felt about it. Everyone seemed to like the new system and preferred having more choice when they complete their work throughout the day (with one or two students who didn’t have a preference either way). It’s been going well so far and really gives the Sea Lions a chance to have more control over their day and work in whatever way that is best for their unique learning strengths. This has also provided Ms. Susan with a greater ability to provide one-on-one math support to those students who benefit from it since not everyone is doing their math problems at the same time. We’ll continue to use this independent work schedule for the Sea Lions for the foreseeable future.

Week 23 - Celebration Party and Beginning a New Unit

/

This week the Sea Lions got to enjoy an Authors Celebration/Cast Party to commemorate all our hard work writing our folktale stories and putting on our class play! The students took turns reading some of the published folktales they previously wrote. We gave toasts and cheers for our hard work with sparkling apple cider, then we ate popcorn and watched the video recordings of our play performances (including part of the silly version we did with “Goldiboy” and other mixed-up roles). We finished the celebration by taking turns running through the painted paper scenery from our play, and the Sea Lions had so much fun tearing it apart.

We wrote letters to our pen pals in Missouri and practiced responding to the questions we were being asked as well as thinking of new questions or additional responses to share with them. Some students got the opportunity to type their letters on the computer and they learned how to use the speech-to-text feature. We also took time to update our Memory Books, adding in some mementos from fun math activities, pictures from Valentines Day, and reflection writing, pictures, and tickets from our class play.

This week we began a new unit of study focused on the Native American tribes that traditionally lived in Oregon. We learned about the concept of how Indigeous Peoples have lived on our continents since “time immemorial,” we read some of the origin legends from several native tribes, and we also learned about the current scientific theory of how a land bridge between Asia and present day Alaska led to people crossing over to this continent around 14,000 years ago. The Sea Lions also explored digital maps (we visited https://native-land.ca/ and https://www.whose.land/en/#) on the iPads to discover which Native American tribes lived in the various regions of Oregon. It was interesting to see how the different regions we studied during our Oregon geography unit tend to match up with areas where different tribes settled. We’ll continue learning more about the specific ways these tribes used the natural resources of their regions to live and thrive in Oregon.

Ms. Susan read the class a book about Rosa Parks and we were able to discuss more about her courageous act. We learned how her arrest inspired the bus boycotts, which led to changes in the legislation of our country. This week we also began a new read-aloud novel called The Birchbark House, which is centered around the life of a young Native American girl from the Ojibwa tribe living on an island in Lake Superior in 1847. We continued reading chapters for our book clubs, and also enjoyed free-choice reading and a visit to the library.

In math, we are continuing to practice with adding and subtracting fractions. We also had a visit from Ms. Ren who led us in an exploration of number palindromes. We used a number chart (up to 100) to mark numbers that are already palindromes, as well as those that are 1-step palindromes, 2-step palindromes, 3-step and so on. We played with the number 98 and found that it still had not created a palindrome number even after 15 steps of adding the reverse!

Even though it was a cold week, we enjoyed Outside Choice time with the Otters, ate birthday popsicles, and learned a fun new game called “Mousetrap” with Ms. Ren.