Students walked into class today and were asked the following question:

Does the body of a dead organism disappear, or go somewhere else?

Here is their take on the question!

We also revisited our Driving Question Board and decided it was time to take everything we learned and see if we could answer some of the questions we asked...and we sure could!  Students visited the DQB, took off a question they felt they could answer, brought it back to their groups and discussed whether they could answer it.  If they agreed they could with the evidence they had gathered, then they answered it!

We sat in a scientists' circle and shared out our thinking to the questions, and realized some of them still didn't have complete answers to some of them, so we put them back up on the DQB.  We also realized we had new questions, so we added those, too!

Mrs. Brinza posted all the answers to the DQB and began to organize the remaining questions.  This will help us think about which questions we should tackle next!

After sharing many of our ideas, we established consensus on what the relationship is between the fly and all the white, wiggly critters!  The fly lays her eggs (which we often can't see) and they hatch from their eggs as larvae.  Over time, as the larvae eat and eat, they become bigger, and through a special process involving a cocoon, emerge as the adult fly.

We're trying to expand our thinking into creating a mathematical model to show the relationship between the fly's weight and the eggs she lays. Here is our initial thinking on developing a mathematical model...I am super impressed!

And here are some revised models, after discussing what each one was trying to represent!  Fifth grade, you're really thinking!

So even though we couldn't bring meat (and maybe flies) into the classroom, we watched the video to help us better understand the role the flies had with the meat.  Trying to connect the flies we saw at the beginning and the white, wiggly things at the ends was certainly tough.  Here's a summary of what the class thinks:

Almost everyone wanted to zoom in on the movie more, but it didn't quite work.  So Mrs. Brinza found another movie where someone was lucky enough to zoom in really​ close to a fly on meat.

We made some notice/wonder charts to organize our thinking...

And are developing some initial models to describe the relationships between the two organisms...

While we asked some AWESOME questions yesterday, we had to think about HOW were were going to answer them.  We spent some time today thinking about the types of investigations we could design to gather evidence...

So we did an interactive "gallery walk" where students suggested investigations we could do for each question we thoughtfully asked.

And the questions about flies seemed like the easiest place to start, since they were the first organisms to visit the dead badger in our video.  If we figure out some stuff about those flies, maybe other questions can be answered, too!

Mrs. Brinza found a pretty interesting video about flies visiting a piece of meat, what we presumably thought the flies were going after.

It's a pretty gory movie, so be warned. We want to remember this is a natural process, so we put on our mature scientist lenses to notice and wonder what may be happening around us.  

And we ended class thinking about how the flies we saw at the beginning of the movie were connected to the white, wiggly critters we saw at the end.  Since we're still not absolutely certain, students were thinking of new investigations to gather the exact evidence we need!

 We've seen the raccoon on the side of the road picture...

And we've watched a dead badger change over time.

So now it was time to put all our questions into one formal place...our Driving Question Board!  Both fifth grade sections sat in a scientists' circle and really thought about the questions they were asking.  Students tried to link their questions to other questions and offered new questions as new ideas popped up! 

​The classes are separated by colored post-its.  Tomorrow we'll be thinking about how we could possibly figure out the answers to these questions!

So while watching an actual dead raccoon over days, weeks or months would give us the BEST evidence to know what causes it to change over time, the classes agreed that that would be impossible for safety reasons.

So over the long weekend, Mrs. Brinza found a pretty sweet timelapsed video showing a fairly similar organism to a raccoon--a badger.  We put on our professional science hats and realized that the process of what would happen to the badger may be challenging for some to watch, but we recognized it is a natural process that we should figure out.  Here's the video!

Students each made a notice/wonder chart from the video, and had a chance to even look at screenshots of four specific days during the 9 day video span.  Here are those screenshots:

There was certainly a buzz in the classroom as students compared their ideas with what was causing the badger to change.  Groups identified how their explanations were similar and different.  We've got lots of uncertainty, along with some things we feel fairly confident about!  Tomorrow we'll be discussing our explanations, along with setting up our Driving Question Board for the unit.

We shared out our findings to come up with these two lists of possible causes for the changes in the badger:

While driving home from work one day in the fall, Mrs. Brinza saw something so interesting on the side of the road she just had to stop and take a picture of it.  The dead raccoon appeared to be roadkill, and it served as a great discussion point last week in class.

There were lots of things to notice and wonder about the raccoon, including how it died, what would happen to it over time, and what would possibly change about its disappearance if the surface it died on changed.  We also wondered how the amount of rainfall or heat would change what happened to it, too.

Students developed initial models for the raccoon and what would happen to it over the course of a couple days, two weeks, and then two months.  Here are some of their models to ponder over...

So here are the investigations we came up with for each class...

And while we agreed that watching this happen naturally would be the best to figure out what happens to the raccoon over time, it may be too challenging to do out in nature or too risky to bring into our classroom.  We all agreed Mrs. Brinza would have to do some research over the long weekend.  Thank goodness we had a snow day Friday (this never happens in Chicago) so she could find something good!  Fingers crossed!