Sea Turtle Life Cycles & Museum Night

I just LOVE what our school does with project-based learning.  I take my students on in-school field trips around the school.  A favorite standard of the teachers (and students) is animal life cycles, so we chose to do this.  We all picked an animal to focus on, other than our standard animals.  We went into deep detail about these animals and displayed our learning.
I chose sea turtles.  I love all animals- especially in our oceans.  So I thought a reptile that needs more awareness would be appropriate.  I made little research books.  My students are used to researching EVERY single week as one of their reading centers.  I alternate between books and websites.  In my listening center, I used Gail Gibbons's Sea Turtles.

My go-to websites are Pebblego and PowerKnowledge.  Our county has a subscription.

I also linked several websites in our student portal, so my students had quick access.  Here are some:

http://www.animalfactguide.com/

http://kids.sandiegozoo.org/animals

http://a-z-animals.com/

http://www.nwf.org/kids/ranger-rick/animals.aspx

http://www.kidsplanet.org/factsheets/map.html

When we had a spare minute, we watched one of these videos.  Wow.  Love these!  There are 25 video clips in all:  http://www.arkive.org/green-turtle/chelonia-mydas/video-09g.html

Quick!  Click on this link:  Sea Turtle Cam.  How much would your students love this?  I kept this on during writing time.

I found a sea turtle poem somewhere on the Internet.  I typed it up, and they illustrated.

This was a math activity- I broke them into groups, and they created life-size turtles (in the different stages of their life).

I found this cute free craftivity on TPT, so they could organize and display some facts they learned.

And here's our display!  I had some responsible students sponge-paint the sand.  You'll also see on the right side their sea turtle essays.  We had so much to share that each child is represented one time on this wall.  The other activities are plastered around my room and doorway.  This was all completely kid-created!! =)

Here are a few other displays on the 2nd grade hallway:

In my last post, I mentioned our Animoto projects.  Here are two students sharing their presentations with proud families: