Classroom Pets and All That!

Our barn and pond at my house.

For those of you who don't me I am country kid who goes to the city to teach!  I live out in the country on 22 acres and we (my husband, son and daughter) have raised horses, cows, pigs, cats, and dogs. Our kids participated for  10 years in 4H, and we enjoyed every minute. Alright not every minute but most of it.

So when my 5th grade team decided to rotate for science this year I volunteered eagerly for the Life Science rotation.  I had already had a class pet, a turtle named Franklin,  before so I was ready to start again! Our 5th grade indicators focus on the process of photosynthesis, food chains, food webs, ecosystems and how animals adapt as well as carrying capacity and the positive and negative impacts that can occur in an ecosystem.

When I starting thinking about my unit, I visited my friend Andrea Smith and fell in love with her classroom and all of her class pets. She does an amazing job of linking all of the pets throughout her day and then intertwining technology and non fiction reading. After talking to her, I decided to purchase a leopard gecko and two mice.  I chose these animals for a few different reasons. First they both live in different ecosystems and second most parents would not allow their children to have these as pets at least the mice.  I then proceeded to apply for the free grant called Pets in the Classroom which I learned about from Mandy Robek @ Enjoy and Embrace Learning. I would encourage you to read her article about pets in the classroom because I can't say it any better!

Our pets are now named and loved!  In order to be in the contest to name the pets the students had to research and find out about their environment including food, shelter and adaptations.  Drumroll please, I would like to introduce Munch and Crunch the mice and Spot the gecko.  I would encourage all Life Science teachers to apply for the Pets in the Classroom grant. I received $150 free money which was a wonderful start to our classroom pets.  Next on the list is an aquatic habitat, perhaps some fire belly toads?

Sound asleep after a fun day at school!

Can I come out to visit?

Wonderopolis is a Huge Hit!

My friend Andrea Smith who writes for Choice Literacy and is an amazing science teacher has really helped me this year with my thinking about Life Science.  After meeting with her in her classroom and discussing how to rearrange my classroom to support classroom pets,  how to change my morning routine, and more importantly to me how to connect writing, reading, science and technology.  She suggested this amazing site called Wonderopolis  On a side note, Mandy Robek wrote an interesting blog about having class pets which encouraged me also.

If you have been reading my blog lately you might have realized that I have been thinking intensely how to use the classroom time more efficiently as well as how can I combine my state indicators. This website and the integration with their iPods has been tremendous answer for me.

The first thing I did was show the students the website and explored Monday's topic: Why Do You Get Ice Cream Headaches? Then the students set up their iPod with a new hot button linked to the site. They were hooked at this point-what a great topic to introduce first. The only better thing would have been if I brought in ice cream for them to eat. Note to self remember that for next year :)

As the students enter our morning routine now starts with the Wonderopolis site up on my Smart board. The students read the question of the day and begin writing down their background knowledge (BK) about the daily topic as well as record any questions that they might have. This weeks topics included: Braille, Supernova, pasta,  and Bloodhounds. This is one of the reasons I love this site because of the wide variety of topics as well as the non fiction writing, videos and links that are provided to support the topic.  This week they wrote on notebook paper next week Mr. Mark and I are going to teach them to use evernote on their iPods.

When we start our reading workshop each day, we spend 5-10 minutes discussing the prior topic of the day. Their reading homework each night is to spend time reading the website, recording new facts, watching the video as well as exploring the new vocabulary words.  This conversation has been at a high level including focus on text support for their BK and questions.

Listening to the video and taking notes.

To conclude the week, I allowed the students to pick their favorite topic of the week and answer 4-6 questions which I wrote using the higher level Bloom's verbs. The students used their personal notes, iPods, and I xeroxed some packets of information from the website. Half of the students used their iPods and the rest chose the xeroxed packet and highlighted the notes while they answered the questions.

I am excited to see the topics this week as well as allowing the students to begin to use the Bloom's verbs to write their own questions for articles.  It is a full circle lesson that I believe will be very successful in our classroom.  Check back later for updates on our new classroom pets, evernote and higher level questions.