Interactive Notebooks

Spontaneous Problem:  Animal Rhymes

Boundary Breaker:  Make a simile to complete the sentence...The Past is like _____ because ______.

Starting off, we practiced our questioning skills to discover the hidden item in our mystery box. We found a postcard from the Roman Colosseum from our friend Mrs. Clarkson! You can check out her recent travels to the area here! Next we looked at a project exemplar featuring Roman art and created our own Roman mosaic artifacts.

Our ancient civilizations project focus today was looking at the FINDS model of research.  We are using the FINDS checklist to help students address the task in a step by step manner.  They were able to explore sources helpful to their topic on our Symbaloo Site and begin to use their digital notebooks for citing sources and note taking.  We also brushed up on primary vs. secondary sources and ways to check the reliability of online sources and using proper citations for those sources.

Research checklist: FINDS

Focus

_____ Civilization you will research ______________

_____ Topic (Cultural Universal ) you will research ________________

Investigate and choose resources

_____ Explore Symbaloo web site and choose web sites

_____ Explore books and choose books to use for research

_____ Site the sources that were used in taking notes

Notes

_____ Type notes in the digital notebook about your cultural universal from the resources  chosen

_____ Describe at least 3 artifacts that are part of your cultural universal

Develop notes into project

_____ Write a research paragraph on your topic from your notes

_____ Create an artifact, model or visual about your topic

Score work

_____ Complete check list

_____ Rubric

_____ Reflection

We also learned to play the code breaking game, Mastermind, as we focused on using information to make a logical decision as critical thinkers.  They really enjoyed this and were getting pretty good at using their clues to eliminate possibilities!  We played the old fashioned way but to play at home, you can use this link!

Ancient Civilizations World Tour

Spontaneous Problem: Name things you can catch.

Boundary Breaker: After watching the You Can Learn Anything Video, students responded with the idea about learning that struck them the most.

Today we took a look at our upcoming research project which focuses on a cultural universal of one of our four ancient civilizations.  Students seemed excited to select their civilization and discover more about life in the past.  From their study, they will be creating an artifact model that they will be able to display along with a museum style placard.  The placard will show off their research and highlight the archaeological find and what it reveals about the culture from which it came.  You can take a look at the project rubric here.

Springing from the cultural universals we discovered last week, students were able to act as time travelers stopping off at Ancient Egypt for a view of the pyramids, and then on to Ancient China to see the making of the terracotta warriors.  Our next stop was Ancient Greece to walk through the columns of the Parthenon, and finally to Rome for a contest of gladiators in the Colosseum.  Students rotated through our civilization stations to get a glimpse of each culture.  They collected facts and stamped their passports as they selected the civilization that they would like to dig deeper into for their research project.  As a class we looked at the where and when of each civilization and added them to our timeline.  Students also got to explore online resources to help them make their final choice.  Here are some links if they are interested in further exploration at home.

Ancient Civilizations Maps http://www.eduplace.com/kids/socsci/ca/books/bkf3/imaps/

Ancient Egypt: http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/menu.html

Discover Ancient Egypt: http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/games/discover-ancient-egypt/

Discover Ancient Egypt: http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/games/discover-ancient-egypt/

Exploring Ancient China: http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-china.html

Ancient Greece: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/z87tn39

Guide to Ancient Greece: http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-greece.html

Discover Ancient Rome: http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-rome.html

Roman Empire: http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-rome.html

Discover the Romans: http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/games/discover-the-romans/

Cultural Universals

Spontaneous Problem:  Name things that are hidden.
Boundary Breaker: Is giftedness right side up or upside down?

Today we had some fun using logic and probability to play Higher or Lower with cards and dominoes.  Students drew a card and held it up to their partner without looking.  The partner did the same and based on the other player's card students made guesses if theirs was higher or lower.  We were able to play with single digit cards from 0-9 and then with dominoes numbering 0-12.  Students discussed and wrote about their strategies, probabilities, cut-off numbers for their decision making, and how the strategy with the cards differed from the strategy they used with the dominoes.

Next up was our Habits of Mind Bonanza.  We focused on three different habits today and then played a matching games to review.  First, students worked on persisting by being challenged to recreate a paper model.  It was a challenge indeed.  As students worked, we took notes of their language and attitudes when faces with the task and discussed failure as a valuable learning experience, often more so than success.  Next we practices Questioning and Posing Problems with our 20 questions mystery box game.  Students were quick to pick on on quality questioning that helped the team to narrow down what could be hidden in the box.  Finally we used the story of Beekle, the unimaginary friend, to spark our creativity and create our own perfectly whimsical companions.

As we head into our study of ancient civilizations, we took time today to read the book Westlandia, by Paul Fleischman.  We looked at Wesley and his journey of creating his own civilization.  This brought to light our nine cultural universals: geography, family, economics, communication, government, recreation, beliefs, education, and resources (food. clothing, shelter).  Next week we will continue on this theme as students look at some specific cultures and get their feet wet with a little research.