Enjoy some of the photos that were taken at our class holiday party. Thank you Ms. Amanda, Ms. Alison, and all parents who helped with the organization and preparation.
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season!
See you in 2016!!!
Changes…
KZE students went on another forest walk this Wednesday. They noticed many changes along the way:
Amie: “More nets around the trees.”
Alex: “Last time, the beaver’s den was long and there were flowers around it. But now there was only snow, no flowers around it.”
Gabi: “Last time there was no sand on the ground. But this time, there were sand on the ground. They put sand on the ground so that you won’t fall down because of the snow.”
Ada: “There were no ducks in the pond. I wondered where the ducks went.”
Altai: “The ducks went to the other pond because the other pond was not frozen.”
Alexandra: “We saw more snow and ice. But last time we saw lots of grass and flowers.”
Julia: “Last time, we saw many big leaves on the trees. But this time, we saw very little leaves.”
Veronika: “I noticed that there were ducks in the big pond and there were no ducks in the little pond.”
Nick: “I noticed that there was little bit ice in the big pond. But the whole little pond was frozen. The ducks can’t live in there. They went out.”
Soeun: “There are lots of snow on the ground. It was cold.”
Seok: “This time there was ice in the water.”
Tomasz: “I noticed that there were flowers last time. But we didn’t see any flowers this time.”
In response to Ada’s question of “where the ducks went?” and Altai and Nick’s answers, KZE students continued their discussion:
Alexandra: “They flew down south. So they can stay in a warmer lake.”
Gabi: “All the ducks go to the bigger pond. Because there are still some water in the bigger pond.”
Mrs. Zurfluh: “What will happen if the bigger pond froze too?”
Julia: “They will go to the ones that are not frozen.”
Veronika: “They will fly to a warmer place.”
Alex: “They flew from the small pond to the big pond. When all the ponds in Moscow are frozen, they will fly to a hot place like Spain, or Dominican Republic.”
Amie: “Or India, or Australia.”
Altai: “If all the ponds are frozen in the whole world, the ducks will crack the ice with their beaks.”
Ada: “I disagreed. Because not all the ponds in the world will be frozen.”
Tomasz: “I agreed with Ada.”
We will continue to observe the forest and record as many changes as we noticed.
Reading Workshop in KZE
Reading in KZE, what is it like? Here is what the kids think:
Safir: ” We are reading and reading and reading!!!”
Alexandra : “Reading is great fun! Everyone loves reading.”
Ada: “Never stop reading!”
Altai: “We are going to get smarter and smarter by reading.”
Alex:” When you read and read and read, you get better and better. You can share with others what you learned. Reading is the best in the whole world.”
Gabi: “When you read, you learn more and more, and then you can become a teacher.”
Julia:” When you read, you learn all the words.”
Seok: “We read everyday in KZE.”
Veronika: “When we read, we read out loud. It is lots of fun.”
Amie: “It is fun reading in KZE!”
Nick: “After Mrs. Zurfluh read us a book, we all talked about what we noticed and what we learned from the book.”
Mali: “When you read, it is lots of fun and you can learn many things. You can tell your mom and dad.”
Tim: “If you read, you learn something.”
The following video tried to capture the reading moments in KZE.
Counting strategies…
After emptying all the seeds from our pumpkin, We wondered how many seeds we have. We decided to count and find out. But first, we had to come up with a strategy.
Group 1’s strategy: (Ada, Nick, Tomasz, Altai, and Emmi)
This group decided to count the seeds by 10s. They made small piles of 10 and then combined them into a large pile when they had 10 piles of 10 or 100 seeds altogether. Finally they added the groups of 100 together. This group had a total number of seeds after their first attempt at counting.
Group 2’s strategy: (Safir, Tim, Soeun, Alexandra, and Julia)
Each person got a pile of pumpkin seeds. They took turns to count their own pile of seeds. The first person counted their seeds and then the second person continued starting with the next number and so on.
Group 3’s strategy: (Alex, Amie, Gabi, Veronika, and Soek)
This group also counted by 10s. They sorted the seeds into piles of 10 and when they had 10 piles or 100 seeds altogether they put them into a bowl.
After counting, each group shared their results and strategies.
What we noticed about our strategies:
Ada: “Group 1 and 3 had similar strategies by counting in 10s either putting each 100 seeds into a bowl or pile.”
We agreed that counting by 10’s is an easier way when counting many objects. We will continue to explore different strategies in the coming months.
Community
Pokrovsky Hills Community Walk:
In support our “How We Organize Ourselves” unit of inquiry, KZE students went on exploring the Pokrovsky Hills community next to our school with the questions of “What jobs do you see people do in a community?” and “What do we need in a community?”
After our trip, we did some reflection and shared what we had noticed. Then we sorted all the things we saw into different categories.
Things:
Houses, mailboxes, garbage cans, decorations, cars, playground, trees, maps, leaves, gate, camera, and delivery truck.
Places:
Maintenance place, doctor’s office, daycare center, store, security guard office, and community center.
Jobs/services:
Delivery man, cleaners,teacher, and security guards.
We brainstormed and created a list of what is missing at the Pokrovsky Hills community and what we need in a community:
Mail man, mail truck, garbage truck, water truck, flower shop, pickup truck, bus station, hospital, zoo, taxi station, shoes store, clothes store, fish market, airport, helicopter station, decoration store, pet store, pond, university, Café, library, candy store, bakery, book store, toy store, fire station, and office building.
This list will help us when we plan our model community. Students are very excited about designing and creating our own model community.
Who We Are
As we wrapped up our “Who We Are” unit of inquiry, students reflected on what they have learned these past several weeks.
Altai – ‘Even if we are different we can be friends. Alex is smaller than me but we are still friends.’
Alex – ‘There are always new children in the school – some are boys and some are girls.’
Tomasz – ‘People are all different.’
Amie – ‘People can live in different countries and different houses. We can be different.’
Ada – ‘I can be different and it’s ok.’
Safir – ‘Everyone is different – some people have long hair and some people have short hair.’
Julia – ‘It’s alright if we are different.’
Tim – ‘Not everyone is the same.’
Soeun – ‘I am different to Julia but I like her a lot.’
Alexandra – ‘Amie has black hair and I have blonde hair.’
Seok – ‘People are the same sometimes. We don’t like the same things sometimes.’
Veronika – ‘People are different because they have different moms and dads.’
Nick – ‘We all like to do different things.’
Gabi – ‘We can try new things.’
After reading the book “It Is OK to be Different” by Todd Parr, KZE students decided to make our own “It Is OK” book. They continued to demonstrate their deeper understanding of “similarities, differences, and acceptance.”
Sink or Float???
Our experiment starts with Nick.
Nick had a Lego boat and a leaf in his “About Me Box.” When he shared with the class, he said: “I like this leaf because it is red and it can swim in the water. My Lego boat can swim too. They will move along and not break in the water.” This made us wondered: would they both swim if we put them into water? What about other stuff? Will they sink or float? Alex made a connection that he had done a similar experiment at home with his Lego boat that ‘both would float. Today we decided to see for ourselves what would happen.
Each student chose one item from the classroom to see if it would sink or float and we went outside with a big tub of water to do our experiment.
https://animoto.com/play/dx1wbqAeL4cSETHL00pM2Q
Mrs. Zurfluh: “What did you noticed?”
KZE noticed that “Some things float and some things sink.”
Mrs. Zurfluh: “Why do you think that happen?”
Altai: “Big things sink and small things float.”
Alex: “If that is true then why do boats float? They are very big.”
Nick: “Rocks will sink because they are small.”
Alex: “If things are big they have more weight and can stay up. When they are small they don’t have weight so sink.’
Altai, Safir and Alexandra agreed with this.
Gabi did not agree: “Some small things can float and some big things can sink. Heavy things sink.”
Alex does not agree: “Then why do boats not sink? They are very heavy!”
Tim: “Some big things have things inside that stop them sinking.”
Ada: “Things that float are made of special materials.”
Veronika: “Some are heavy and sink. Some are not heavy and float.
Julia: “Big things can float. Small things can sink.”
Amie: “Things that sink don’t have feet.”
Mrs. Zurfluh: “How can we find out?”
Alexandra: “We measure things to see if they will float or sink.”
Amie: “We can do more experiments.”
Alex: “I looked for information on why things float on my dad’s phone.”
Safir: “We can look on the computer.”
Altai: “We can watch TV.”
Tim: “Books. Sometimes people look at boats and then write what they find out.”
We posted our question “Why some things sink and some things float?” on our wonder wall. We are waiting to see if it will spark more inquiry in KZE.
Inquiry in Writing
The following video captured part of the writing process in KZE. Students looked at books written by professional authors, shared what they noticed in these books, created noticing chart, had mini lesson focus on specific point of noticing, and try it out in their own writing. After trying, they go back to mentor texts and noticed more things. They decided to try again. They learned a lot from others on using illustration in their writings to express ideas and thinking.
https://animoto.com/play/8LhNhqqQquK8RAv9VBtO0g
Forest Walk
After our discussion on cycle. We continued our learning on seasons. We went on a forest walk to observe and explore our environment. Here are some of our noticing…
The trees:
Tomasz: “the wire is around the bottom of trees so that the beavers don’t eat them. It is to protect the trees.’
Alex: “The tree is broken because it has tipped over.”
Tomasz does not agree: “It is still growing because there are 
some green leaves on it.”
Some of the students agree with Tomasz and some don’t. They all agree that they need to do some more observations.
We looked at the difference between small trees and big trees and agreed that the big trees were older.
Gabi: “This tree may be 100 years old!”
Safia:“There is also a wire cage on it to stop the beavers eating it.”
The mushrooms:
Nick: “the mushrooms are growing out of the tree, but it is not safe to eat. You cannot eat it.”
Soeun: “There are two mushrooms!”
Veronika: “There are 2 mushrooms because it’s a big place so enough room for 2.”
Tomasz: “I saw a big, huge mushroom at the forest in Poland.” He thinks if we look carefully we may find one as big in our forest.
We noticed the mushrooms in the tree but also that there were some smaller mushrooms 
on the floor of the forest.
Nick: “They have leaves around them.”
Alexandra: “The mushrooms are brown and smaller than the ones in the tree.”
Altai: “The leaves are over them so they don’t get wet if it rains.”
Mrs. Zurfluh: “Do mushrooms need rain or water?”
Nick: “Mushrooms need rain because everything dies if there is no rain.”
Alexandra: If no rain and the mushrooms would die.”
The bird house. This caused a lot of discussion with the students.
Alex: “Birds live in it.”
Gabi: “Birds live in trees so why do they need to go to a bird house?”
Tim agreed with Gabi.
Altai: “Because it’s cozy and looks like a house.”
Amie: “Because there is food in the bird house.”
Alex: “Yes, people put food in the house in case there is no food for the birds in the trees.”
Tomasz: “It’s a small house, only small birds can go into it.”
Julia: “Only a few birds will be able to eat at one time.”
The beavers den.
Nick: “There are flowers growing around the beavers’ den.”
Alexandra: “Flowers also grow on the grass.”
Alex: “They also grow on the ground.”
Mrs. Zurfluh: “Do you think beavers like flowers?”
Nick: “Beavers like trees and bees like flowers!” Alexandra: “Bees get nectar from the flowers.”
Safir:“Butterflies also like flowers.”
We are still wondering and trying to find out whether beavers like flower.
Many ducks live in our forest.
Gabi: “I saw 17 ducks.”
Alexandra: “Ducks quack!”
Nick: “Ducks like bread.”
Julia: “Ducks like to swim.”
Mrs Zurfluh: “Ducks also stick their heads under water, I wonder why?”
“To find food.”
Amie: “One Duck made a big splash when it landed on water.”
Alex: “Ducks can fly and they can swim.”
Veronika: “Ducks can swim really fast!”
On our way to the forest Alex noticed how green the forest looked. He wondered – ‘if the forest is always green or if it changes.’ We decided to take a photo of Alex in front of the forest and then next time we go back to see if we notice any changes.
We took a photo of KZE on the bridge. The boys were 
especially interested in the structure of the bridge! Nick and Tim were sure that boats would not be able to go under the bridge but Nick had a good solution!
Nick: “Boats cannot but submarines can!”
Gabi: “AND paper boats!”
Altai: “AND remote control boats!
We will go back to the forest soon. We are wondering what we will see next time…
How the World Works – Cycle & Changes…
One afternoon, Mrs. Zurfluh showed students a picture of a bicycle wheel and asked: “What do you notice about the picture?”
At first they noticed that it was a tire, a wheel, it was round and had lines (spokes) on it. “It was a circle. It had two circles on it.” After some discussion they decided that it went around and around. This brought us on to the idea of a ‘Cycle’ – something that happens over and over.
Mrs. Zurfluh asked: “Knowing that cycle is something that repeat again and again. Can you think of anything in our environment or life that we can call it a cycle?”
Tomazs: “It’s like a clock. It goes around and around.”
Ada Amie: ” The flowers grow and grow, then they die, and then grow again, and never stop. And that is a cycle.”
Tim: “The earth goes around and around, and don’t stop.”
Altai: “Day and night. We get up in the morning and go to sleep at night.”
Veronika: “I don’t know how to say in English. (Then she said it in Russian. Another friend tried to translate for her) “It was like the days and months.” The days changing – Seasons!
Altai: “People too. Start with babies, they grow, and grow, and become old and die. And start all over again.”
Tim: “Same as the turtles. They lay eggs, they hatch, and then they grow and lay more eggs.”
Ada: “The Sun. It comes out in the morning and goes down at night.”
Altai: “The trees get older and older and bigger and bigger. They cut them down. And then new tress grow.”
The students all agreed that our schedule is a cycle as well.
After our discussion on cycle. We continued our learning on seasons. We went on a forest walk to observe and explore our environment. Stay tune for more of our learning stories…