Rainforest museum

A few weeks ago (sorry) Aaron's class presented the culmination of their Rainforest unit: a Rainforest Museum for which the second-graders create the exhibits. Each student made a fantastic poster of their selected rainforest animal, which they had studied for weeks, and presented their poster to attending parents and other students. Aaron's animal was the Red Panda. Each kid had an essay posted on their poster, and cue cards to remind them of interesting things they wanted to share with their audience. One of Aaron's favorite things to share was that "black bamboo is like cake to a red panda."

The whole presentation was fantastic. The students were very serious and enthusiastic, and extremely well-informed; every kid I talked to told me something I didn't know. Ahead of time, the class had come up with rules for parents visiting the museum, which were very insightful and kind of killed me:

1. Please don’t talk or text on your cell phones.
2. Cell phones may be used for taking pictures!
3. Please limit your visiting to out in the hall.
4. Visit many exhibits (not just your own child’s)
5. You are welcome to ask questions, but please don’t “quiz” us. We ask that you limit your questions to what we have researched and know.
6. Have fun!

Perhaps these rules should apply to any visit to anything, you know? Another great thing they worked out was that each poster had a button on it that said "Push Here" (just made of folded paper), which you could push to have the kid begin their presentation. I thought this was rather brilliant because at my own professional poster sessions, I spend a certain amount of energy trying to figure out when someone wants me to start talking, and when they want to be allowed to just read for a bit.

Here are a few other friends with their marvelous posters. I think Adam had fruit bats.

Anna was very identified with her chosen animal.

Avi presented about capybaras. I particularly liked how her poster illustrates a capybara family, since they live in families, which are not the same as herds.

More about their rainforest study here.