Ecosystems of the Chesapeake

This group worked to show how the Chesapeake Bay as an ecosystem is a structure.  They created aquatic and terrestrial food webs which interacted and became food webs.  They also built a model of an oyster reef!  Way to go!

Chesapeake Bay Characteristics

This group worked to show how the salinity, temperature and circulation of the water in the Chesapeake Bay are all interrelated.  They learned about what makes an estuary and a watershed.  Their map also shows the producers, both terrestrial and aquatic, that make up this impressive structure!

The Oyster Story

This group worked to tell the story of the rise and fall of the oyster population.  They showed human and environmental stressors on the oyster population on their timeline.  This timeline includes charts, graphs, photographs and original artwork to tell the story of the oyster in the Lynnhaven River.

BUILD YOUR WILD SELF by John

     Today we went to the computer lab and did www.buildyourwildself.com.  It was a lot of fun, first we picked a body.  Then we picked some awesome clothes.  After that we picked a skin tone.  Then after that we picked ears, eyes, mouth, tail, arms and all that cool stuff.  We did all of this because we're learning about adaptations and camoflague, instinctive and learned adaptations too.  Like Natalia used her animal to show that she knew about mimicry by saying that her animal hibernates and by doing that it mimics the bear.  To summarize, buildyourwildself.com was a lot of fun!

Heros All by Ainsley

     We will be singing about some of our famous American Heros.  The songs that we are singing in Heros All are about Helen Keller, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr.  We will be having the Heros All performance on November 21, 2013 at 6:30 pm. We rehearse in the cafeteria and practice in the music room.  Many kids in our classroom like singing and speaking in Heros All.   Other kids in room 8 say that Heros All brings back memories about all of our heros that helped us back then.  I hope everyone enjoys watching the show.

November 4-8 by Room 8 Scholars

Veterans Day by Camryn, Nash, Jocelyn, Jacob, and Abby

     Veterans Day honors people who serve or have served in the military.  My  dad honors and serves our country.  When he is working he has to make sacrifices and give up certain liberties, like spending time with family.  Sometimes my dad is not here on holidays, like Christmas, my birthday, and Thanksgiving and Halloween.  My dad went away for 6 months.  Sometimes he goes away for longer like 9 months or shorter like 5 days.  Sometimes I only see my dad on the weekends because he works far away during the week.  My dad is not always safe.  If he dies, he dies serving our country.  We all love our parents.  Whenever our parents are gone at least we know they are serving our country and protecting our liberties and freedom.

Math by Ellie

     I am writing about math.  Not like addition, subtraction, multiplication or division.  I am talking about just subtraction.  Not subtract like one-digit numbers or numbers like 37, 22, or even 10.  I am talking about 3-digit numbers.  Such as 369, 293, or 568.  Also I am talking about 2-digit numbers such as 98, 87, even 58.  Today the math problem is 

                                                                           369

                                                                           - 87  

So I just do what I always do when I am subtracting.  Since I can't subtract 8 from 6, I have to exchange.  So I cross out the 3 and make it a two  Then, I make the 6 a 16.  Now I can subtract 8 from 16.  So my answer is 282!

Special Events in Room 8 by Reeves

     We have many exiting events in room 8.  Good job with reflection everyone.  Quinn with his Ga'hoole writing and Ainsley and her "Chase the Day Away" entry and Kyle R. with his photography.  Don't forget to bring in cans for stuff the turkey!  So far Mr. Helke is winning with about 27 cans.  But theirs still time to bring in more.  I'm glad we could wear our costumes on Halloween.  I like all the cool costumes every one wore.  We also liked boo grams.  Don't forget to come to Chuck-E-Cheese Family Night to play fun games and earn cool prizes next Wednesday November 13.  I hope everyone enjoyed these special events!

* A note from Ms. Greene:  Reeves didn't mention that she also entered the Reflections contest!  I wanted to be sure she was recognized as well!

October 21-November 1

MATH:  We have introduced multiplication in math and have had fun with games to help us learn our facts.  Here's one called spiral multiplication you can play at home with a deck of cards and a die.

Spiral Multiplication

Array for Multiplication!

SCIENCE:  The students have continued their study of oysters as we try to figure out how to help the Oyster Reef Keepers of Virginia increase the oyster population in the Lynnhaven River.  First they decided they needed to know something about the oyster's life cycle and how it fit into the food chain.  From there we explored food webs, energy pyramids, population and community, and ecosystems.  Next week we will see how the oyster fits in to what we learned.

Mrs. Sorabella came in to repeat the oyster filtration
experiment.  The first time it didn't work.  We learned
that scientists often have to repeat their experiments,
especially when they get unusual or unexpected data.

Oysters filtered this water in less than an hour!

Next we were off to research!  We have our own
Share point page you can see under Sites to See on the ODC homepage.  

LANGUAGE ARTS:  In addition to all the research and nonfiction text reading we did, we enjoyed a week with Junior Great Books reading The Fisherman's Wife.  We even had a guest teacher, Kriko Michaels, from the Great Books Foundation come and teach our class for a day!  The students are doing a great job learning about different types of questioning and are really pushing themselves and each other to develop critical thinking skills!

AND OF COURSE HALLOWEEN BROUGHT LOTS OF FUN!  

Dr. Hedrick booed us!  The boo grams were a blast and really got everyone in the spirit of giving and friendship!

It was so fun to see everyone's creative costumes!

.  

 
We used pumpkins to develop our scientific inquiry skills.  The children predicted the weight of their pumpkin, the number of ribs and circumference, how many seeds it had, and whether it would float or sink.  They each wrote a hypothesis (a testable statement) about the relationship of the size or weight and the number of seeds.  They collected their data, compared their data with other groups' data, and then analyzed the data before writing up a conclusion.