Bees and Birch Aquarium

WOW! We have had a busy last two weeks. In our project work, we have made fantastic progress toward our research. We continued to make observations on how animals live and care for eachother in their communities in the classroom and at the Birch Aquarium. In addition to taking observations on animal behaviors the students also created scientific sketches about the attributes of various fish. Our students used these sketches in addition to notes they've taken in science to teach the rest of the second grade about fish attributes for our grade level project installation. (The grade level will be collaborating to create a school of fish to help our school community remember that we are a team and work together just like fish do... more on this to come.)

Fish Research

The students took observations on schools of fish and fish attributes... we even got to talk to experts at the aquarium about the relationship between various tide pool creatures.

The students had a blast as they shared their knowledge of fish attributes with the rest of the second grade. They divided into teams to teach about the purpose of various types of fish tails and even helped students interact with real fish.

Bee Community Observations

Students also continued making observations on animal communities with our Bee Expert, Miss Hillary. She taught us all about the intricate way bees work together to survive. We interacted with each other just like bees do. We also had a chance to take up close observations of bee images, real honey comb, and live bees working in a community! Don't worry, they were in glass! We cannot wait to share all of our research with you at our end of project exhibition in November.

Informational Text

We also began looking at information text and understanding all of the features of non fiction text. Using this information, we began the first draft of our own informational writing. We will be learning informational writing as a technique to organize all we have learned about animal communities.

We are looking forward to taking this information and seeing how we can connect animal communities to our own classroom and school. Stay Tuned!!