The Rookery

Como Park

We had a great field trip on Tuesday to Como Park Zoo and Conservatory.  It is one of my favorite places to go with classes – we always find something amazing to marvel at.  It is never crowded and its smaller scale invites discovery…and its admission is a suggested donation so it is truly a zoo for all.

We began the morning with a class with a zoo keeper that took us behind the scenes.  We especially enjoyed the opportunity to go back into the green houses and talk with the arborist who cares for the Japanese garden.  He showed us a few pine trees that he hopes to prune into shape this winter so they can go into the garden in a few years.  (It's no wonder that my own garden never looks like theirs!)

We then explored the North garden which highlights many of the tropical plants that drove the spice trade.  The Herons' voices echoed through the conservatory as they marveled at all of the plants we had read about: cardamom, black pepper, ginger, cinnamon…  We also saw a jackfruit whose fruit can reach the same size as many of the 5th graders!  The fern room yielded more wonders – especially the spore patterns on the backs of the leaves.  We also really liked the bromeliads – some of which can host entire mini-biomes in the tiny puddle in their centers.

The sloth moves!

We learned about commensal, parasitic, and symbiotic relationships in the tropic area; we tsked the strangler fig's audacity and cheered the pacu pacu's inadvertant service to the forest (it eats and distributes seeds timed to drop into the Amazon during yearly floods.) But the sloth stole the show when it moved — several times!

We left with more questions than we came with – the sign of a great trip.

Explorer Exposition

We are deep in preparation for our culminating event – we hope to see everyone there on Thursday from 12:30-2:00.  You'll be able to visit with a viking and learn how to use ravens to find land, try your hand at making a water compass, and peruse a book about the plants recorded by Lewis and Clark.  You can explore the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan then travel down the hall and learn from Henry Hudson. You can even take a trip to the future and learn about our colonization of Mars. Plus much, much more!

One of the key pieces of learning as we prepare a theme culmination is how to break down a large project into manageable pieces.  Together, we mapped out our time on a calendar and set mini-deadlines for different parts of the work — planning, research, writing and making.  We talk a lot about "sparkle" and how it fits in to the schedule.  As much fun as it would be to start with the extras, those extras don't mean much if we don't have a strong foundation for the event.  The students take this seriously and Remy and I provided writing organizers and individual "to do" lists to help students set priorities.

This is always an exciting time in the Herons.  We've learned so much during the theme and have to figure out ways to distill it for our visitors.  Inevitably, we find new questions that we want to answer and end up learning more in our quest to become experts.  Culminating events give us an authentic reason to review and synthesize what we've learned.  Everyone is writing scripts, creating posters, or making books — not because we've told them they've had to but because they want to communicate and teach.  The paints are out, the costume boxes are raided, and the popsicle sticks are in the house.  We can't wait to share with you this Thursday!