Our theme for January is penguins! We started our penguin research projects today and will continue to work on these for the next two weeks.
In science we have been focusing on our NGSS standard of "Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive." We have been learning all about penguins, but we also want to learn about other animals that live in groups. Yesterday we read about why ants live in groups. We learned that in ant colonies each ant has its own job to help the colony survive. Today we worked in small groups to assemble a product. We talked a little bit about assembly lines and then worked in our groups to assemble a snack bag containing a healthy treat, a salty treat, and a sweet treat. After discussing jobs, the groups were given time to complete the task. As each group was working, I walked around and had one person from each group "leave" so the rest of the group had to take over their job so that we kept our production up. We talked about how it would have been harder to make all of the snack bags on our own. We will continue to do experiments like this to apply our knowledge of animals living in groups. Be sure to check back for more pictures of our experiments!
In science we have been focusing on our NGSS standard of "Construct an argument that some animals form groups that help members survive." We have been learning all about penguins, but we also want to learn about other animals that live in groups. Yesterday we read about why ants live in groups. We learned that in ant colonies each ant has its own job to help the colony survive. Today we worked in small groups to assemble a product. We talked a little bit about assembly lines and then worked in our groups to assemble a snack bag containing a healthy treat, a salty treat, and a sweet treat. After discussing jobs, the groups were given time to complete the task. As each group was working, I walked around and had one person from each group "leave" so the rest of the group had to take over their job so that we kept our production up. We talked about how it would have been harder to make all of the snack bags on our own. We will continue to do experiments like this to apply our knowledge of animals living in groups. Be sure to check back for more pictures of our experiments!