Food Chains

 This week, we shifted our focus in unit from "What makes up an ecosystem" to "The interconnectedness of living things within an ecosystem." Considering the interactions and relationships between the living things lead us to inquire into food chains! To begin, the students created their own KWL (Know, Wonder, and Learnt) Chart. They added in things that they felt they already knew about the topic of food chains, as well as questions or wondering about things that they want to know or learn about food chains. After doing this, a few students shared their thinking of what they felt they knew about food chains, and then students drew and labeled pictures of food chains.

To find out more, we watched a Mystery Science video about food chains and enjoyed playing a food chain card game in small groups called, "Eat or Be Eaten!" This, and the follow-up lesson really helped us to understand the different parts of food chains, and lead us to the conclusion that plants are at the low end of the food chain, followed by a herbivore (plant-eater), then one or more carnivores (meat-eaters). 

From there, we began inquiring into 'How do plants grow?' 'Do plants eat?' and 'Do plants poo or create waste?" The students began researching these questions today and will create a poster together with a partner on Tuesday to show their understanding of what they discovered in their research and will do a short presentation about their poster to the rest of the class on Wednesday.

In math, students started putting their knowledge of line plots to the test by creating their own survey questions for their classmates and then made a line plot of their own to show the data. After creating it by hand in their math notebooks they started making good copies of it digitally on Seesaw. Next week they will complete the activity which also requires them to make a question and answer sheet about the data in their line plot. We ended the week with a line plot review by playing a game on Kahoot.

In PE, we continued playing various cooperative games. This week we focussed more on small group or partner games. Some of the games we played were Time Machine where 2 players use a hula hoop as a time machine portal. One player stands in the hula hoop and the other has to lift it over the first player and then put it on the ground in front of the first player who then jumps into the portal moving forward in place and time. They repeat this until the player has crossed the playground and then the players swap roles. We also played two similar games, Frogs Across the Pond, and Loggers, all of which involved teammates helping each other across the playground.

We also played a new tag game called, Two's Company, Three is a Crowd, and Boom Ball where teams battled each other by trying to knock a basketball into another team's zone by throwing balls at it.

Spare Masks

Please make sure that your child has at least one spare mask each day, occasionally they get dirty, wet, sweaty, or have straps that break off by accident so the child should always be ready just in case. I did have a couple spares on hand in the classroom but my supply is getting low. Thanks for your cooperation.

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.

Team Building in Grade 3

 One of the approaches to learning that we are focussing on throughout our first unit of the year is social skills. During our PE lessons, the goal of many games such as Cross the River, Tama Ire and Line Tag has been less on competition, and more on cooperation so we have been playing several games that require more cooperation than athletic skills. Encouragement from others helps motivate us much more than harmful words so we have also been working on positive communication during PE and within the classroom.

During unit time, students worked together with partners to learn more about some of the Earth's main biomes using research skills to help them discover specific information from both non-fiction books as well as from a couple internet sites (DK Findout and Britannica). In doing so, we examined the various features of non-fiction texts (Table of Contents, Index, Glossary, pictures, diagrams, words in bold, etc.) so that the students would be able to use and recognize those when searching for information in books.

Our first writing unit of the year also focuses on non-fiction writing as the students will be working on Information writing. Each of us is knowledgeable about a variety of subjects, so the students began by becoming teachers and informed others about a variety of topics from skateboarding and story writing to Minecraft and How to be a Spy! (I hope she's not writing from personal experience!)

In math, we have started our first unit by looking at how information and data can be represented in graphs and other visual representations.

Finally, the students have received their first HOMEWORK assignments of the year. It has been shared with them on Seesaw, and I have explained everything to them. However, if they need to be reminded, there are clear instructions on Seesaw, and I have even Voice Recorded the instructions for most of the Seesaw explanations. At this point, most assignments require access to either Seesaw or one of the following websites: Powerspelling.com, Prodigy.com or KidsA-Z. Your child should know how to log themselves into most, but to help those that forget, I will be sending out their login details to their school email accounts.

If anyone has any questions, please let me know!