Handling Data, Biomes and Toxic Waste!

 This week in Grade 3 math, the students have continued their inquiry into data handling by taking the data about different animal tooth lengths, tail lengths, horn lengths, and brain weight from a data table and had to represent it in some other format. It presented a good challenge for them as they had to consider what was information was important to include when creating their displays. Most decided to put it into a graph, which created other problems such as having to decide on what scale they would use for the graph.

Once their displays were complete, we did a gallery walk to see how others created their displays. During the gallery walk, students had to answer two important questions: What do you learn from it?  and What questions do you have about it? This open-ended task, was somewhat difficult for the students as many posted critiques of each others' work such as, "This is too messy?" After several reminders, some better questions and comments about what the students could learn from the displays did eventually emerge. "What is this animal?" "I didn't know a narwhal's tooth was so long!" "Where is the title?" Questions such as these demonstrated that the students had a good awareness of what needs to be on a graph or display. 

During language, we have been working on information writing and the students have been coming up with different ways to organize their topics and subtopics. We looked at examples of how non-fiction books are structured in logical sequences and at how the authors titled each with an interesting name. Working with a partner to share ideas, the children tried to put their chapters into new sensible sequences with interesting chapter names.

They will continue to work on these over the next few weeks.

In unit time this week, students continued to develop their understanding of the different biomes by sharing and comparing their chart with their results with someone else's chart. Then the new partners did a mini-presentation and watched short videos on BrainPop to clarify any details that may have been missed or incorrect. We also did a short mapping activity placing the main terrestrial biomes on a world map. 

In PE, the students really had to cooperate well with their group members to carry the toxic waste soccer balls across the playground using rings and skipping ropes to make sure that no one would get too close to the toxic waste! It was frustrating for many as one small error could cause the toxic waste to fall off forcing the team back to the start but in the end, each group was able to have some level of success. The emphasis on positive communication between team members really helped ensure that it was a cooperative environment.