Project Groundhog

We are all "a twitter" with excitement.  Our class is paired up with 5 other classes in an internet  project which seeks the answer to the question "Can the groundhog predict the weather?"  Yesterday the class created a graph of their predictions of what would happen today.

The students are learning to make graphs and more importantly, to read graphs.  The data collected can be read this way:

a) More students in our class thought that the groundhog will see his shadow on Feb. 2nd.

b) Less students in our class thought that the groundhog will not see his shadow on Feb. 2nd.

c) Eleven students thought the groundhog will see his shadow and nine students thought the groundhog will not see his shadow.

d) There are two more students who thought the groundhog will see his shadow.

 The students were to do some homework last night.  Each was to think of a name for our groundhog.  After much discussion and a vote, this darling girl's choice of Shadow was agreed upon. We didn't know where to find a groundhog to dig out of his burrow, so I had to make one, but a paper groundhog doesn't eat much!

This is an amazingly mild winter here in central Alberta.  We can all agree that usually there is much more snow and much lower temperatures at this time of year.  None-the-less, our groundhog, Shadow, dutifully 'popped' into the snow and looked to see......

...an amazingly looooong shadow.  The students agreed that the shadow would not look this way later in the day.

Just to show how long the shadow really is, we had one of the Grade Three boys lay down beside the shadow and it was longer!  Who knew that even when you lay down, you can create a shadow!

When you put the whole class together, they created a monster shadow!  According to Shadow from Sherwood Park, we will have six more weeks of winter.  We are excited to hear from our 'partner' schools in Greenshore, North Carolina, Austinburg, Ohio, Lincoln, Nebraska, Urbandale, Indiana and Steinbach, Manitoba.  What do you think their groundhogs saw this morning?  Will they be expecting six more weeks of winter like our groundhog has told us that we will have?