What a wonderful week we’ve had!
This week kicked off Black History Month. In our class, we have dedicated every day this month to hearing stories to celebrate and honor the wonderful contributions Black people have given throughout our history. This week we read stories about the poet Langston Hughes, Dr. Patricia Bath, Alvan Ailey (as well as watch this AMAZING video that includes his choreography). We also read the books The ABCs of Black History and Kwame Alexander’s beautiful poem/book The Undefeated. In our class, we believe Black history IS American history, and include it in our curriculum throughout the year. This month is a time for us to lift up, honor, and celebrate.
We have continued on our Space Exploration journey but have moved on from the center of the solar system to the outer planets. Students learned about our Gas Giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. We did this through a few non-fiction texts while keeping up with our Space Binder. For our project time, we began creating our solar system mobile project, which will include all of our planets and our dear sun. So far we have made the sun and our outer planets, but as we begin to learn more about the inner planets, we’ll begin to include those as well.
This week also kicked off our friends and family volunteers. We had JJ’s dad, Jason, and Lynn’s dad, Jake, come in to share their knowledge with the first and second graders. Jake shared a simulation (linked here) that gave students a wonderful visual about the relativity of size. It zoomed in and out and we were able to see how tiny we actually are. The next day, Jason read The Three Little Aliens and the Big Bad Robot, which of course was deeply engaging! Afterward, he led us through an interactive lesson about gravity. Students had so many questions and comments throughout, which will be so much fun to return back to when we discuss it later on in the unit. In the before times, we often had family and friends volunteering to come into the classroom to share their interests and expertise with us, so it was nice to see some loved ones in the class with us again.
We ended our week with an early Valentine’s Day celebration in our pajamas! We read the story, Love is Powerful, and created Space Themed greeting cards, which came out amazingly.
I hope you all have a lovely break, and I will see you soon!
Tate