All About Polar Bears
It all started with a scholastic news magazine about polar bears. They had one simple wonder..."What eats a polar bear?" I asked them where they could find the answer and their response was..."Siri".
Eventually after much prodding and encouragement they came up with books. We took books out of our library and they started learning about polar bears. We also used the data base "Pebble Go". The idea of "post-its" came up as a way to capture the things they were learning.
We also found a great polar bear cam to watch from the San Diego Zoo. Here's the link: Polar Bear Cam
Riley brought in a book from the Medfield Library. As the kids were reading it, they discovered that it was all about two of the polar bears that we were watching! So exciting....
They then decided that they wanted to teach other kids in our school about polar bears. They came up with the idea of a bulletin board.
Tahila came up with an idea of how to show that polar bear's fur is hollow transparent tubes with black skin underneath. The light reflects off the tubes making them look white.
We looked her at her design and used design thinking to come up with even better prototypes. They even held them up to the windows to see if they really looked white.
We even wrote polar bear story problems with partners in math centers. Now we are trying to solve each others using QR codes.
They were incredibly engaged, read a variety of text, worked with partners, explained their learning in writing, etc. WOW! All I did was ask them what they needed. We are still getting polar bear things brought in and added to our board. Here is an example.
