Observing and Sketching Trees

We decided to head outdoors again and take an even closer look at a tree in our school yard.

   

Wow…it is really a beautiful tree.  It's a red oak (at least that is what Breckin told me.  He is going to teach us how to identify a red oak tree!)  We talked about how the tree looked and what the parts of the tree were.  We identified the trunk, bark, branches and leaves.   We really observed it closely which was going to be very helpful to us in a little while.

   

One thing scientists do is record their learning in a journal or notebook.  When we returned to the classroom, we got out our Science Journals and started sketching the tree we observed.  We were careful to include all of the things we saw.

   

When we finished, we spent some time admiring each other's work.  We could see our work by putting it on the document camera and projecting the image on the SMART Board.  Then we got to explain our drawing to the class.  It was pretty cool!