Project Groundhog

At the beginning of February our class excitedly joined Project Groundhog. This is a 6 week internet project with schools across the country and Canada. Each day we record the weather and each week we share information with the other schools on our team. Our first task was to adopt a groundhog mascot and choose a name. After much discussion and a close vote, our mascot is named:  Chuckles
We learned about the other schools on our team and found them on the map.

Next, we made our own predictions as to whether Phil the Groundhog would see his shadow on February 2nd. Here are the class results. As you can see our results were different from the actual results :)

Prediction: Do you think Phil will see his shadow on Groundhog's Day? Why?/Why not?  Essential Question? How does the weather affect whether the groundhog will see his shadow or not?
The morning of February 2nd, we took our handmade groundhogs outside to see whether our results were the same as Phil's. 

Our groundhogs saw their shadows. This led to a conversation about how the weather is different in different areas. We concluded that in Pennsylvania it must be cloudy but here in Middleton, it is sunny. Essential Question: Why did our groundhogs see their shadows but Phil the Groundhog did not? For the 6 week project we recorded the weather and temperature each day.  Because the founder of Project Groundhog is based in Canada and Project Groundhog is open to teachers in the both the United States and Canada we recorded the temperature in Celsius. This tied in perfectly with our Metric Measurement unit. At the end of the week, we found the average temperature for the week. Below are a couple of student samples.

For a fun project we read the story Punxsutawney Phyllis and then the students wrote an opinion letter to Groundhog telling him whether they would make a good substitute groundhog or not.

Listen as the students read their letters. They are very cute!