"Ms. Buchholz was exploring in her back yard. She came across a leaf and a green sphere lying on the ground near each other. There were many trees around but she couldn't figure out what tree the green sphere had come from. Did they come from the same tree?"We are trying to figure out what type of tree the leaf came from. We started by sketching. Many explorers, such as Lewis and Clark, used sketching as way to document what they found. Sketching helped us notice all kinds of details in the leaf that we would have missed. Here are Anna Grace's and Ryan's work:
After sketching we recorded what we noticed and also what questions we were wondering about. This is an important part of the research process.
Some of the things we noticed:
- Leaf is flexible
- Smaller veins between larger ones
- Veins in with small "thorn"
- Bent stem
- Veins are white/yellow
- Oval shape (skinny)
- Edges look like a wave (curly)
- Different colors in veins
- Veins are square shaped in middle
- Whole leaf made of smaller veins that connect
- Big vein in middle holds leaf together
- Small veins alternate off big one
Questions we're wondering about:
- Why are they prickly on the edges?
- How many "scales" are there?
- I wonder if we could use the stem as a type of string?
- Why is there a stem?
- Why do leaves have veins?
Do you know what type of leaf we sketched? We'll let you know what we find out. We're hoping to do some research in the computer lab Friday to identify the leaf and finally solve the mystery of the "green sphere." This sketching, note-taking, and asking questions is the process we will use when doing research for our podcasts.
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