Plant Research and PBLs

Hey everyone!

I'm returning a bit later than I wanted to my good ol' blog, but I'm here, so I'm happy.  :-)  We have been working hard on researching the parts of the plant in class lately.  When I saw Amy Lemons's Earth Day unit, I knew I could use her parts of the plant foldable to help my students with notetaking.  The results are below. 

One of my student's flower foldable

Student notes on plant roots and leaves



Once we found and recorded information about how the roots, stem, leaves, and flower help the plant, we formed groups in class.  My students are working with partners to develop a product and presentation that can answer how each part of the plant helps it survive.  It's been a fun week! 

Do you do project-based learning at your school?  What's your favorite PBL unit or topic that you teach?

Finally, I'm getting ready to celebrate Earth Day on Monday.  What read alouds are your favorite to share with your students?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.   

A Long Time Gone, DonorsChoose, and Great Ideas Soon to be in Action

Hello blog buddies (if you're still here),

It's been a long time.  It's been quite the school year.  I can't believe we are coming to the end of it.  Tonight will be a short post as I simply get back into the art of blogging.

As for the title, it was completely accidental, but it made me think of this Dixie Chicks song (Long Time Gone).  I loved them when I was in high school.

 

1) I have a new Donors Choose project posted, which you can view here. I have had one project funded by DonorsChoose before, and it was such a great experience that I decided to try again. Best of all, if you donate to any projects this week (through the 14th) and use the code "INSPIRE" the DonorsChoose Board of Directors will match the donation.

2) I saw a great guest post on Christina's blog, written by a guest blogger (Sara from Smiling in Second Grade that you can read here.  I LOVE the idea of Friday journals, and I can't wait to start this next year.  Frankly, I was so excited about this idea, especially for my English Language Learners, that if it didn't mean that I would have to find an extra journal for each of my students I would have started this immediately.  

3) I recently took advantage of the TpT Easter sale, and I picked up two great units.  I picked up Hope's poetry unit which you can find here and I picked up Amy's Earth Day unit which can be found here.  We have just begun our study of plants so we are working on Amy's parts of a plant foldable in class right now.  I'm excited to give you an update about this study later.     That's all for now.  It's definitely time to go home.