Transcript

This is our Wall of Science, and we were looking for an interesting way to make an anchor chart of the solar system. We spent probably about three to four weeks on the solar system, which is a really, really exciting unit for us. I was able to tell them about my favorite, that is actually how I begin the lesson, my favorite planet is Saturn. And I just love Saturn because it's huge. I love it because it has such beautiful rings around it and it is so colorful, and they were saying, "Ms. Ray, Saturn is not the only planet that has rings around it", and I was, "Are you sure", and they were like "Yes". And I said, "Well can you prove that?" 

In reading we'd been talking about facts and opinions, so it kind of tied in pretty well, I said, "Well, I don't know, I need you to go back and tell me how many planets actually have rings", and so they said, "Well we already know that Uranus has rings". I said, "Well are you sure that's the only planet?" And they were like, "Yes", I said, "Can you prove that?" So that was a good way to get them to going and research the planets, not knowingly that that was the reason why, but they wanted to prove to me that they knew that there were only two planets with rings. 

So I had them do that through a little research. And as they were researching they found different things about different planets that they actually enjoyed. So we came up with, write about your favorite planet. So everyone decided on a planet that they thought was unique and then they had to tell why. So if they chose Mercury, they would have to tell me something about Mercury you couldn't just say "Well, because it's the closest to the sun." I want you to tell me why. So, you actually had to go in, research Mercury, find out things that separated it from the other planets and write about that. So this is our science anchor chart on our planets.