Further learning about bats: Part 2 of our bat inquiry!

The students and I have been reading many books about bats. One book in particular, a fiction book titled: Stellaluna demonstrated some differences between bats and birds. This wonderful story is about a little fruit bat named Stellaluna who happened to get separated from her mother and ends up in a nest with three baby birds.

After reading the book a few times, as well as watching a video of the story, the students had a few more wonder questions about bats.

One amazing question by B. P. "How are bats born?", started a wonderful discussion among the students. 

"Bats get born first from a mouse and then they go inside a tree and then it's really dark and the mouse turns into a bat!" W. E.

"Maybe Stellaluna gets born from her mommy! It looks the same as it does now." H. S. 

"I think baby bats are born alive from the mother bat." J. S.

I told the students I wasn't sure about the answer to this question. With all the wonderful books and ideas they had, I asked them to continue to think and look at our classroom books to help guide us in figuring out the answer.

One morning, K. E. brought in a book from home about bats which he wanted me to read to the class.

As I read the book to the students, we found some very interesting information! Bats are mammals, they have fur and have babies born alive. Birds, have feathers and their babies are born from eggs.

A. F. also found this great information in one of our bat books to add to our investigation!

We decided to add this new information to our Venn diagram that showed the differences between bats and birds.

Over the next few weeks, I noticed some students were fascinated by these pictures found in many of the bat books we had at the Discover Area.

I decided to read one of the books that contained the pictures they were interested in. As we came to one of the pages, I asked them what they thought this picture was all about?

"It looks like noise." D. A.

"It's bouncing off." P. I.

"What's bouncing off?" Mrs. Ralph

"The noise from the moth bounces off the moth and back to the bat." J. S.

"The noise from the moth bounces back to the bat and tells the bat there is food near by and GULP! The noise that the moth makes bounces off from the ears of the bat!" O. S.

"Wow, how did you come up with this theory?" Mrs. Ralph

"I thought about it and looked in the books." O. S.

"They hear the sound the bug makes and fly and try and get to eat it." E. E.

"In dark caves bats don't use their eyes, they use their ears. I looked at K. E.'s book and it said that." W. E.

I read some more from the books and we found out bats use sonar to guide their way in the night to locate food. This is called echolocation!

"I think the bat squeaks through their noses and then the further away the echolocation, it takes longer for the sound to reach or come back to the bat means the bug is farther away." J. K.

To support further learning, we continue to enjoy listening to this informative and very catchy song about echolocation!

We have wonderful fiction and non-fiction books about bats, but I also wanted to find a way to connect students to bats in a meaningful way. I was able to find some wonderful videos about real bats flying, eating and being taken care of after injury. A wonderful organization I started exposing the students to was the Toronto Wildlife Centre. Their website contained wonderful pictures and videos of the wildlife animals they help that are sick or injured. One day I stumbled upon this picture and immediately showed the students!

Right away they noticed the picture of the bat. I told them that the TWC had 12 Big Brown Bats and 1 Small-Footed Bat in their care. Many wondered why they were there? They also noticed something written in pink marker. 

"What does the writing in pink say?" P. I.

I read the word endangered to them. Then I asked them what they thought that meant?

"I think it means they're in trouble?" H. S.

"There's not so much bats. They're like dinosaurs, not anymore." W. E.

"Maybe they bonged into a tree and are in trouble?" E. E.

"Maybe they don't have a home?" C. D.

"Maybe they don't know how to fly?" P. I.

"Maybe bad guys want to eat the bats?" L. S.

"Maybe there's not a lot of caves?" D. C.

"Maybe there's too many bats in the cave and not enough room for the other bats." B. K.

I also showed this video by the Canadian Wildlife Federation to the students. It is advanced in the language but I wanted to support them further in understanding why some bats were endangered.

After viewing the video, I asked the students if they wanted to share something they heard or learned from the video. 

J. K. hand went up right away, "I heard the word fungal disease."

I was excited that this information was heard and discussed.

A few days later O. S. brought in a fabulous book about bats from a trip she took with her mom to the public library. 

As promised, I read the book to the class and it was filled with amazing information supporting our video about bats being endangered.

Below are some of the theories that the students formulated from the book "A Place For Bats". 

"Disease means that something is sick. My mom told me. I was talking about bats and I told her 'what does disease mean?' and she said that something is sick. Fungal means that something is sick." E. E.

"When bats get sprayed by pesticide on a farm, it can die. In PEI, my mom told me to shut the window because there was pesticide sprayer moving. You use it to spray bugs on the plants." J. K.

"You spray it on fruits and plants so bugs don't eat them." F. D.

"Bats can't eat the bugs that are full of pesticides, if they do , they will die." P. I.

"Pesticides that chemicals that makes bugs sick and when bats eat them they get sick and die." O. S.

"Maybe in pesticides it grows fungal disease and makes bats sick and die?" J. K.

"Pesticides have chemicals that hurt the bats bodies." W. E.

"Maybe salt water grows fungus because it doesn't look like regular water. It has white stuff growing." M. S.

"The fungus has chemicals and the chemicals grow white nose syndrome. Their nose is getting white." J. K.

"Why is the Little Brown Bat endangered?" M. S.

"Fungal disease means that bats are in danger and they're sick." E. E.

"When bats get White Nose Syndrome, sometimes they can't fly. There's no more bats and when they sleep in their cave, the pesticide goes inside and all the bats will die." P. I.

"There's not much places for bats to live because people are cutting down trees and building and they get tired and there's no where for them to sleep." O. S.

"In the nighttime when they (wind turbines) spin, the bats can get dead because they fly into them." J. K.

We also had a great presentation from the Toronto Wildlife Centre. As experts, they were able to build on the students' existing knowledge about bats and answer further wonder questions they had.

The students were able to think critically and apply their knowledge from the videos, books, TWC presentation, and class discussions, in creating theories of their own about the many bat wonders they had. Their learning was made visible in the creations they made during our Thinking and Learning Time.

 Pointing at the bat's nose that appears to looks like the fungus in the book.

"We made a bat house." A. T. 

"The bats couldn't go because of the wind turbines." K. E.  

Making a bat box.  

The white cubes are bats that have White Nose Syndrome. 

Drawing a diagram of a bat and adding labels. 

Creating books about bats.

Students started noticing pictures of bat boxes in many of our bat books. They have been building them at various learning areas. Stay tuned! 

Looking closely at lines

During the last few weeks, students have been pointing out lines they noticed on their clothing, and lines in objects found in our classroom and around the school yard. They were excited to show me their lines and identify them by name. One morning during outdoor play, S. C. proceeded to tell me more about lines:

"Lines are everywhere! Our bodies are lines! We can make lines with our feet and our hands! We can make lines out of wood chips!" 

It was interesting to see that looking closely at lines was starting to pick up momentum with the students again, so I asked them if they thought they could find more lines outside during our outdoor exploration? 

Take a look at their findings! 

  

Sharing the pen

Since the beginning of the school year, we have been exploring and investigating lines through various art forms: pencils, crayons, pastels, charcoal pencils, paint, plasticine, and wire. 

In adding another element, we decided to try creating a collaborative line art piece. A large piece of paper was placed in the center of the carpet with a pen. The students sat in a circle around the paper all asking each other what this was for, and what we were going to do?

The objective of the art activity was for each student to have a turn creating a desired line and passing the pen to their friend without removing the pen off the paper.

The students marveled at each other's lines and supported one another when passing their pen to their friend by reminding them to leave it touching the paper.
*Thank you for the wonderful activity Havergal College (Junior School)

Collaborative line art piece board display

Capable Learners: Reflecting on the Image of the Child

The ‘rich’ child is a co-constructor of knowledge, learning best by being engaged and by doing, by experimenting and researching with others - not by being told.

UNESCO Policy Brief on Early Childhood, N° 47, January – March 2010

Throughout the last few weeks, I have been amazed at the work and quality of learning that is happening in the classroom. It's encouraging to observe the critical thinking students demonstrate when they interact and manipulate open-ended materials that are purposefully placed to create an environment that supports self-selection, imagination, and creativity. The image we have of children is very important in terms of the capabilities we think they possess. Beautifully explained below are excerpts from Loris Malaguzzi, Found of the Reggio Emilia Approach:     

The environment you construct around you and the children also reflects this image you have about the child. There’s a difference between the environment that you are able to build based on a preconceived image of the child and the environment that you can build that is based on the child you see in front of you-the relationship you build with the child, the games you play. An environment that grows out of your relationship with the child is unique and fluid.

Malaguzzi, Loris. (1994). "Your Image of the Child: Where Teaching Begins". Exchange.

Loris Malaguzzi describes the rich as being 'rich in potential, strong, powerful, competent and, most of all, connected to adults and other children'. The ‘rich’ child is an active learner, ‘seeking the meaning of the world from birth, a co-creator of knowledge, identity, culture and values’; a citizen, the subject of rights not needs; and born with ‘a hundred languages’. The theory of the hundred languages of childhood refers ‘to the different ways children (human beings) represent, communicate and express their thinking in different media and symbolic systems’. These many possibilities range from mathematical and scientific languages to the many poetic or aesthetic languages expressed through, for example, the use of music, song, dance or photography.

UNESCO Policy Brief on Early Childhood, N° 47, January – March 2010

Believing that children have the ability to independently seek knowledge, and providing them with an environment that fosters exploration, investigation, and wonder, is evident in the capabilities that they possess and demonstrate. Below are a few images of the amazing learning from the past few weeks.

   

We need to produce situations in which children learn by themselves, in which children can take advantage of their own knowledge and resources autonomously, and in which we guarantee the intervention of the adult as little as possible. We don’t want to teach children something that they can learn by themselves. We don’t want to give them thoughts that they can come up with by themselves. What we want to do is activate within children the desire and will and great pleasure that comes from being the authors of their own learning.

Malaguzzi, Loris. (1994). "Your Image of the Child: Where Teaching Begins". Exchange.

Once teachers have prepared an environment rich in materials and possibilities, they observe and listen to the children in order to know how to proceed with their work. Teachers use the understanding they gain thereby to act as a resource for them. They ask questions and thus discover the children’s ideas, hypotheses, and theories. They see learning not as a linear process but as a spiral progression and consider themselves to be partners in the process of learning.

Gandini, Lella, "Values and Principles of the Reggio Emilia Approach," in Insights and Inspirations from Reggio Emilia: Stories of Teachers and Children from North America. Ed. Lella Gandini, Susan Etheridge, Lynn Hill. Davis Publications, Worcester, MA. 2003

  

All children have preparedness, potential, curiosity; they have interest in relationship, in constructing their own learning, and in negotiating with everything the environment brings to them. Children should be considered as active citizens with rights, as contributing members, with their families, of their local community.

Gandini, Lella, "Values and Principles of the Reggio Emilia Approach," in Insights and Inspirations from Reggio Emilia: Stories of Teachers and Children from North America. Ed. Lella Gandini, Susan Etheridge, Lynn Hill. Davis Publications, Worcester, MA. 2003