During our study of mammals, we learned that there are some mammals that live in the ocean.  This began our investigation into the lives of whales.  We began by reading many books about whales (see our book list at the bottom of the page).  While we read about whales, we found that there are many different kinds of whales.  We decided to work in small groups of 2-3 to learn more about the various species.  Each group was assigned one of the following whales:  Gray, Bowhead, Right, Humpback, Narwhal, Orca, Sperm, Beluga, and Minke.  The small groups used resources such as books and Internet sites to find information on their assigned whales.  Our favorite Internet resource was Zoom Whales.  After reading about their whales, students drew pictures and wrote reports about their assigned whales to share with the class.   

While learning about the many species of whales, we learned that there were many similarities and differences between them.  This led us to compare and contrast the different kinds of whales using Venn Diagrams.  We used Kidspiration software for our diagrams.

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Finally, our class decided to help make a difference in the fight to protect endangered whales.  We visited the Adopt-A-Whale site and decided to adopt Icarus.  He was first spotted in 1982 as a young whale.  He appears to have survived an entanglement that deformed his tail.  We talked about how to raise money to adopt Icarus and decided to turn our whale research into T-SEARCH!  Our teacher put our whale drawings and whale research onto t-shirts using transfers.  These t-shirts were available for our parents to buy for a small cost.  We love wearing our research.  It lets everyone else learn about whales too!