Five for Friday Turkey & Education Week

I am sadly missing pictures but here is an update on our week.

1. We researched Turkeys! We used multiple sources to gather information on wild turkeys. PebbleGo the database (I love that our school has a subscription) & Scholastic Let's Find Out were our main sources. When we were working on recording the sources on our class tree map, one of my students pointed out that we should write videos because both the magazine online and the database had videos of wild turkeys. What was the big question they wanted answered...Do turkeys climb or fly to get in the trees to sleep? So our research went on...

This book was in our library center this month and what does the turkey tell us but that yes he can fly. So I offered the students another source (we hadn't talked about)...interview. They interviewed me. Yes, I have seen wild turkeys and was able to add more information. This class kept adding branches to their tree map - Turkeys...can, are, have, live, eat - as we learned more and more.

It was a great tie into comparing bats and birds last month as we read Stellaluna.

 

2. Turkeys continued as a focus when we read A Turkey for Thanksgiving

We sequenced the animals from the story onto a turkey hat...imagine the picture of the great hat here. Turkey's head in the front and tail feathers around the back of each child's head with the story sequenced on it. They loved retelling this story.

 

3. Speaking of sequencing, we read Our Special Sweet Potato Pie

from our reading series - which is a fun fantasy tale. We also predicted and discussed family meals.

 

4. A little Math update in the middle of all this literature....

One of our warm-ups this week: draw me at least 2 shapes that together have 7 vertices. A challenging question that the students took on as a challenge. They worked to find all kinds of combinations (triangle and...square, rhombus, trapezoid, rectangle). They ruled out using the hexagon because there aren't 1 sided shapes. It became a great lesson.

5. We had guest readers this week. In honor of American Education Week, our kindergarten invited members of our Board of Ed to come read to our classes. We have 6 classes so they read to 3 classes at a time. : ) We have a very large school district and thought most people would be booked already. What a nice surprise to find 5 that wanted to read to us! We also had guest reading from our principal, financial secretary, and the college age niece of one of our teachers. My team picked great books and some of our guests brought their own. Our guest reader books tied into our PYP attitudes and attributes and our transportation theme including: Hooray for Diffendoofer Day, Oh the Places You'll Go 
Daredevil   Rosie Revere Engineer   Balloons Over Braodway