Happy New Year! Factors that Influence the Weather and a New Student

 Happy 2021 to all of the Third Grade families! After the long winter holiday, I was certainly ready to be back in school with this wonderful class of kids. 

Our Grade 3 class also grew as a new German student, Marie joined our class. So we were happy to welcome her this week.

With regards to our unit of inquiry, we continued right from where we had left off and learnt about the 4 factors that cause weather: temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction and air pressure. In learning about temperature, we sorted out the difference between weather and climate and learnt about the 5 main climates on the Earth: Tropical, Polar, Temperate, Mild (Sub-Tropical) and Desert.

We also took a closer look at the water cycle and the states of matter, as they both play important roles in how weather occurs. We drew detailed diagrams and wrote notes explaining both and also discussed the role of air pressure. To further the students' understanding we also watched a couple videos on the topics on BrainPop and an episode of Magic Schoolbus during lunchtime.

Next week we will be getting into the thick of things as students will be doing research projects on different types of Extreme Weather. I'm looking forward to being blown away by some of their work!