Friday, October 16, 2015

Somewhere in the Ocean

We can explore the ocean by turning the classroom into the interesting and mysterious habitat.
We are fishing for letter fish in the Alphabet Sea, and counting black pearls on the beach.
We created a submarine to take us down into the depths of the ocean.
Morah Katie: More than half of the planet is covered by ocean.  We are going to become oceanographers, scientists who study the ocean.
What do you think we will discover?
Clara: I know that beluga whales live in the ocean.
Evan: There is seaweed in the ocean.
Ari: Sharks live there.
Clara: Lots of creatures live in the ocean.
Evelyn: Seals live in the ocean.
Morah Katie: Wow! You are clearly very knowledgeable oceanographers! I can't wait to explore the ocean with you.

Evan: Ari this map use to be just white, but I added blue to make the ocean. I'm making the land green.  There is so much blue.
Ari: There is a lot of blue on that map.
Clara: Nora, we are coloring in the land, the ocean is blue but the land is green. There is a lot of land but a lot of blue too.
Nora: Yeah, there is a lot of green to color. The ocean is done.
We discovered that the ocean is very deep, with 5 different zones.
 
Clara: The water is so dark!
Nora: It is so dark, I can't see.
Evan: The top is where the sunlight is. Lots of animals live there, then it is darker and then the next is the midnight zone and the animals there don't need eyes, and some light up on their own.
Evan: So this is going to be our ocean.  We have to make it black because the trench is the deepest part of the ocean. It is so far down.
Judah: Not a lot of animals live there, only a few like the sea cucumber and the sea spider!
Clara: I would want to live in the sunlight zone where the plants would be, and it would be warm.
Matan: My ocean has lots of animals.
Effective learning occurs when the child is doing something they can have a hand’s on experience with.
Evelyn: This is the water. The dolphin lives in the ocean.  The octopus lives there too.  Fish are swimming all around.  
The sea lion lives in the ocean.
Morah Katie: Sea lions swim in the ocean to catch fish to eat. They are mammals and need air to breathe like we do. 
Evelyn: So they don’t live in the water.
Morah Katie: When they are done catching fish they come back on land to rest and sleep.
Evelyn: So here it is on the land.

We are reading a book to help us explore the zones of the ocean.
Morah Katie: Manatee's eat sea grass where would you find them?
Augie: Sea grass is a plant, manatee's who eat it live in the sunlight zone.
Morah Katie: Sea otters, hold on to kelp while they eat sea urchins, where do you think they spend their time?
Evelyn: The sunlit zone.
Morah Katie: The dad sea horse tells it's babies to hold on to grass, where would you find sea horses?
Abe: Seahorses hold on to grass so they must live in the sunlight zone.
Judah: But sea cucumbers live in the trench.
Augie: This is the jellyfish, I like them, they look silly like jelly and they zap their food.
They float around and then with something comes by they 
Abe: ZAP them!
Morah Katie: What zone do octopuses spend most of their time in?
Clara: They swim in the twilight zone and sometimes in the the darker zone.
Judah: But they can be in caves in the sunlight zone.
Morah Katie: What do octopuses use their ink for? 
Clara: To hide, it makes everything darker.
Morah Katie: What zone will we find sea turtles in?
Augie: I think the midnight zone.
Morah Katie: Sea turtles breathe oxygen
Augie: OH THEN they'd be in the sunlight zone at the top.
 We made our own personal oceans.
Olivia: My ocean is the midnight zone.
Judah: The squid live there and the fish that light up.
Augie: Yeah, the light up stuff lives there because it is dark.
Morah Katie: What zone do we find most of the life that lives in the ocean?
Olivia: The sunlit zone. Asher's ocean is that one.

Clara: Look! I have seaweed for lunch! 
Matan: That's for fish!
Morah Katie: Seaweed is a plant, we can eat it.
Abe: I think divers go down and cut it and bring it back.

















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