Vertebrate Science Stations

Lately in science, we've been studying vertebrates and for the first time all year, we took the plunge with science stations last week. Since we've done math in stations pretty much all year with Math Workshop and we also do Daily 5 (where reading, writing, and word work all occur simultaneously throughout our class), we already had a lot of practice learning this way.

During each rotation in science, which lasted about 25-30 minutes, we had eight students working at each of the three stations. The three stations included a hands-on, investigation involving bird feathers; a "scavenger hunt" activity classifying different animals into the five vertebrate classes based on their specific characteristics; and reading the vertebrate section in our Life Science books and recording our learning in our own words, with accompanying illustrations.

As with doing anything for the first time, our science stations weren't entirely perfect; however, we felt it was pretty successful overall with being engaging, collaborative, interesting, and most of all educational!

Check out the pictures below, many of which were taken by Caitlyn, and feel free to ask us any questions or leave us a comment. Thanks for reading!

Station #1: Bird Feathers Investigation

In this station, we observed different bird feathers to help us explore how different types of feathers help birds survive. Here, we are placing droplets of water on different types of bird feathers.

As we investigated the different bird feathers, we used the chart above to record our observations.

Here, we're measuring bird feathers and observing
how different types of feathers react to wind.

Station #2: Classifying Vertebrates 

In this station, we used the Smartboard, computers, and books to find vertebrates and classify them into one of the five vertebrate classes based on their characteristics.  Online, we mainly used this website to classify animals.
As far as books, we used our Life Science textbook and about a half-dozen other books on animals we had in our classroom library.

As we identified vertebrates online and in books, we used this chart
to classify the animals based on the characteristics of their vertebrate class.

Station #3: Learning Highlights

In this station, we had the option of reading the vertebrate section of our Life Science book with a partner or independently. As we read, we recorded highlights of our learning (in our own words) and drew correlating pictures to help us visualize and remember what we learned.  

Learning Highlights 10/10-10/21

Math
While we will be reviewing many, many prior concepts, these are the main concepts we are focusing on:

• more practice with adding & subtracting decimals
• multiplying decimals
• data & landmarks
• probability 
• rounding & estimating

To watch an interactive video on any of the above math concepts, go here and type in the concept in the search box in the upper right hand corner. 

Communication Arts

• making connections during Read-to-Self 
• text-to-self
• text-to-text
• text-to-world
• CLICK HERE to learn more about these connections!
• previewing novels for Book Clubs beginning the week of 10/17-10/21
• letter writing
• We will be writing letters to our pen pals in Mr.Malany's class in Kenton, Ohio, this week!
• spelling 
• We will spend time practicing our spelling words on Spelling City.
• Oreo sculpture "how-to" second drafts
• verbs 
• action verbs
• linking verbs
• helping verbs 
• Here's a verb video we'll be watching to learn more about verbs:

Science 

• cooking in the kitchen with Chef Rob on Thursday, 10/13
• working in the greenhouse with Farmer Curtis on Thursday, 10/20
• measuring the mass of Oreos as an extension of our O.R.E.O. project
• separating the hydrogen and oxygen atoms from water in a lab
• reviewing what we've learned so far about matter in a "Find Someone Who" activity; quiz will occur two days after review (specific date TBA)
• mobile science van special activity on Thursday, 10/13

Health

• "Don't Meth with Me" presentation on Wednesday, 10/12 to learn the harmful effects of meth and its shocking prevalence in Missouri and immediate surrounding areas
• counselor visit on Friday, 10/14
• Sometime during the week of 10/17-10/21, we will be watching the Family Life and Safety videos.

Other 

• On Tuesday, October 11, we learned what we had in common with the fellow classmates in our team; we will be using these commonalities to generate a team name to help us improve team spirit and cooperation for cooperative learning activities to come! 
• On Friday, October 14, we worked in our teams to develop our team names. All but a couple teams finished finalizing their team name.
• On Wednesday, October 19, we will be going on our field trip to the art museum!
• On Thursday morning, October 20, we will be going to the Health Fair.

Investigating Matter

Today in science we began learning about matter by observing physical properties of objects and classifying matter as a solid, liquid, or a gas based on our observations. Each team had the following items each in its own bag: a red rubber ball, corn syrup, water, ice, and air. Each person in the team was responsible for measuring the mass of one of the items, and then everyone in the team passed around the objects and made observations using four of their five senses. (Can you guess which sense we did not use?) After making and discussing the observations, we classified the objects into one of the states of matter: solid, liquid, or a gas.

Check out our pictures of us measuring matter, observing properties of matter, and recording our data and observations in our science notebook: