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Formulating questions, researching, exploring, and celebrating fall!

10/24/2015

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Students have been discussing what types of questions make good SOLE questions (https://www.solecle.com/#/welcome). This brought us to our conversation on Thin vs. Thick questions. Sometimes we have questions that are thin...the answer is right there. It is not open-ended or debatable. Example; Where is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame? What is the largest mammal on earth? Thick questions are questions that you have to search for the answer.   They are open-ended and require deep thinking. Example: What would happen to a plant on Mars? Why do things have to die? We practiced coming up with thin and thick questions while writing about ice cream. After each student wrote a question about ice cream, we discussed if we thought it was thin or thick and why? 

Then we practiced coming up with thin and thick questions for our unit, Sharing the Planet. We compared these questions to the questions we had already been collecting for this unit. We found that many of our questions were thin when the unit first began. We talked about why this may have been. We discovered that when we don't know a lot about our new unit or central idea, we ask more thin questions because we don't have schema to draw from.  As we learn more, we have more questions....questions that go deeper and deeper and really cause our brain to sweat!
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Researching; SOLE Question; What would happen to plants if there were no bees?
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Sharing great work...creating, reflecting, and sharing!
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How do living and nonliving things interact on our playground?
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Thank you to Jake's family for our healthy, spooky treats!

Making Connections at the Zoo and Celebrating Fall with Family and Friends!

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I LOVE THIS PICTURE!!!!!

Fall Festival 

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Painting our Buddy Benches


​What Is The Buddy Bench?

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The buddy bench is a simple idea to eliminate loneliness and foster friendship on the playground. Spreading the message of inclusion and kindness!
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Our class took action this week and collected pet food for Rescue Me Ohio and the North Olmsted Pet Pantry. This act of kindness meant a lot to us, as we collected in memory of our pet guinea pig who passed away, Rocky. 
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Thank you, Mrs. Taseff for helping us deliver the pet food and to all of the families of CIS who donated and supported our action! We're making the world a better place for all living things!
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Ohio Animal Research and Making Inferences

10/18/2015

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This week, we began working on our research skills independently. We know that sometimes we research as a group through the use of SOLE (Self-Organized-Learning-Environments), but we also need to know how research is done on our own.

Ask your child which Ohio animal they chose to research. They must include the animal's body description, habitat, diet, and life cycle (how their animal grows and changes). Each student will create a habitat for their animal in art with Miss Cohen and will complete their research and information writing in class with me.

At the end of the unit, students will be expected to present their findings, the four subheadings listed above along with explaining how their living thing functions and interacts within their habitat for survival (our central idea). Their paper will be a writing grade for this unit on informational writing and their presentation will be graded on a rubric for their understanding of the central idea.
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Reflecting on our research allows us to know what we did well and what we need to improve on. It also helps me to plan and support students better.
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 After learning how to infer, we practiced using our small group reading stories. 

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           Happy Birthday, Jake!

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Habitats, Natural History Museum, and Mark Newman

10/9/2015

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This year, we are book buddies with Mrs. Hawley's 4th grade class. We asked them to teach us what they know about living things and how they interact within their habitat for survival. 
Learning about living things, habitats and extinction at the Natural History Museum
Author, Mark Newman visited our school to share his book, Sooper Yooper and the invasive species in our Great Lakes.
sooperyooper.com 

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Sharing the Planet

10/2/2015

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Sharing the Planet
Central Idea: Living things function and interact in their habitat for survival

Lines of Inquiry: 
The environment is a combination of the interactions between living and nonliving components. 

Key concept; Connection

Living things cause changes on Earth.

Key concept; Change

Living things that once lived on Earth no longer exist.
Key concept; Causation


Vocabulary; 
living things, non-living things, habitats, endangered, extinct, fossils


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Mrs. Taseff volunteered to help grade two set up a worm farm in our garden.
We are very excited to compost and use the soil to grow our fall bulbs that we planted.
Roddy's mom showed us how worms eat their way through soil.
We didn't know how helpful worms were with growing our plants.
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The environment is a combination of the interactions between living and nonliving things. While planting fall bulbs with Mrs. Taseff, we observed the living and nonliving things on our playground and in our garden.

Living things in our classroom
Meet Goldie and Stripes
Meet Rocky
Building healthy relationships with other living things is also important. We will continue working on this by improving our social skills and being bucket fillers!
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I came to work on Friday with this sweet bucket filler from a student. It sure did give me just what I needed to get through the day after a very busy week! Thanks, Richard! You filled my bucket!!
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    Author:
    ​Dora Bechtel

    Welcome to my Campus International School blog.  Campus International is an International Baccalaureate School on the campus of Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio.  

    As Instructional Leader at CIS, I am able to enjoy the learning  taking place in all classrooms K-8. This blog will give you a glimpse into our wonderful world of learning through inquiry, and share some strategies you can use with your child/students.

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    May 25th Newsletter
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