As part of our science learning about Living Systems, we planted some seeds this week! We have poppies and peas growing, and we've been learning about how seeds germinate. As the weeks go on, we'll talk about plant needs, senses, and conservation as well. The students were especially fascinated when we learned about plant cells and DNA which led to some rich discussions! The most exciting event of this week has been the arrival of our chicks! We had 13 hatch, and and the different chicken breeds are all adorable and fascinating to observe. The class has been abuzz about all the interesting chick behaviour, their amusing names, and careful tending to their needs. They've even been the topic of many a poem in our class this week. We can't wait to spend more time with them next week!
We were excited to welcome some praying mantises to our class this week! As part of our unit on living systems, our class received a delivery of three mantis hatchlings. They are Chinese mantises, and are currently snacking on flightless fruit flies. Eventually they'll grow large enough to eat crickets! The class has been dutifully checking on them throughout the day since they arrived, and we have named them Joe, Lizzy, and Mant. You can watch the video below to see a mantis laying an ootheca of eggs. This week we've been learning more about chicken adaptations and development! We got to candle a couple of the eggs, and we learned all about the different parts of the egg that allow the chick to develop inside. Students "dissected" their own egg in class to find the albumen, air pocket, embryo, chalaza, yolk, and membrane. It was egg-cellent fun! We’ve been very engaged in our Living Systems unit in science recently! In this unit, students will analyze and describe how plants and animals interact with each other and with their environments. We've focused especially this week on food chains and learning about the life of a chicken. It's been a busy and fun week! During our learning on Living Systems, students will:
We were very this lucky today to have the chicken lady Mrs. Hardy deliver 20 eggs for our class! The eggs are settled into the incubator now where they're toasty warm and carefully rotating. This will be the next component of our science unit on Life Systems. Next week we're going to take a peek inside by candling the eggs, and in the coming weeks the chicks will start to peck their ways out of their shells! After that they'll spend about a week in our class before heading to the coop on Mrs. Hardy's farm. The class is already eagerly observing the chicks' progress!
We were lucky to pilot a Telus World of Science Edmonton program this week where we learned about viewing computational thinking through an Indigenous worldview. Computational thinking is an important piece of our new science curriculum this year, and it was really special to learn about this way of thinking from Natasha who is a Métis sky scientist from TWOSE. Natasha talked about how she's learned from elders and knowledge keepers, and also scientists and scholars. She taught us about two-row wampum belts and how they were used in the first treaty between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people on Turtle Island, representing the two cultures with the blue river of life beads and white beads representing peace, love, friendship. Natasha encouraged students to tell a story with their beading, and also in our coding in class. We also talked about perfection, and how when we make things as people we want to focus on expressing ourselves rather than being perfect. This tied in nicely with the Métis tradition of including a spirit bead in your beading, which is a bead that is misplaced or miscoloured to remember that no one can achieve perfection all the time. During our beading time, Natasha also taught us a lot about coding such as binary code on computers, algorithms, and loops. The students worked hard on their beadwork, and their designs and beading turned out beautifully. It was a meaningful and enlightening project for all of us! We’ve started coding in our class, which means that we’re telling a computer, app, phone, or website what we want it to do. This week we used an app called Lightbot and a some robots called CPX to practice our skills in communicating, solving complex problems, and thinking logically and critically. The class found designing repeating patterns using the lights and speakers on the CPX especially fun! As this article reports, Today, computing is involved in almost all aspects of our lives, from communications and education to social media, banking, information, security and shopping. Networked computers are capable of controlling our homes’ thermostats and lighting, our cars and our health records. You can read more about the thinking behind students being exposed to coding here, and we will keep you updated on our further adventures in coding!
We learned lots and had lots of fun today at Telus World of Science! We got to watch a special presentation about Indigenous sky stories in the Zeidler Theatre, and we participated in the Thrill Rides program led by our science expert which tied into our class' unit on Energy and Forces. Our instructor helped us review concepts on inertia, energy, gravity, and friction. We also were able to explore all of the exhibits in the facility thanks to our four wonderful volunteers! As we conclude our Energy Unit on forces and simple machines, we learned a lot as we built our Rube Goldberg Machines this week. Inspired by the whimsical cartoons of Rube Goldberg, students eagerly built their own Rube Goldberg machines using materials from home and school. From levers to pulleys, each machine showcased their understanding of forces and simple machines. The classroom buzzed with creativity as we celebrated each other's designs and marveled at the creative cause-and-effect sequences. Through this project, students not only grasped scientific concepts but also honed essential skills like problem-solving and teamwork. Here's to the joy of learning and the endless possibilities that await as we learn about science! We built our very own cars this week to explore the simple machines of the wheel and the axle! Students built the base for the car, the axle, and carefully selected and attached their wheels. We had four criteria for these cars, and the students designs did extremely well in our driving competition.
This past week, our grade three class examined how levers can help us to do mechanical work as part of our ongoing exploration of simple machines in science. With hands-on experimentation, students explored the principles behind levers by manipulating fulcrums and loads to observe the effects of these adjustments. Through trial and error, they discovered the important role of the fulcrum's placement in determining the balance and efficiency of the lever, as well as the impact of varying the amount of load. We can't wait to build our cars and Rube Goldberg machines next week! Our Grade Three Coding Club is buzzing with excitement as students dive into the world of computational thinking! Meeting every Tuesday, students have been learning how to use block-based coding to create programs. Our group has learned about strategies like debugging, loops, and detecting patterns, and the students have been making excellent use of their problem-solving skills. We’re looking forward to working with robots and making our own arcade games in the weeks ahead!
In science this week we've been exploring how simple machines including wheels, axles, levers, pulleys, screws, inclined planes, and wedges can reduce the amount of work or force needed to accomplish a task. This week we focused on how rollers and inclined planes can be used effectively to move things along a path or move things upward, and the students were even able to drag the teacher across the room in a bin using some handy-dandy rollers!
Our last day of Zoo School had plenty of highlights! We got to meet Lucy and learn lots about her, and Anna created a ferret enrichment with snow which was very delightful to observe. (It turns out, pretty much all of our various predictions about what Chacha would do with the snow came true!) We got to see the zookeeper Sarah feed the fruit bats (a challenging task), and we got a good sighting of the two-toed sloths. We helped Anna decide on an enrichment for the Goeldi's monkeys (who are known for being somewhat lazy), and they eventually got around to exploring the lettuce, tissue paper, and meal worms. We also got some hints about which monkey was the dominant one. We said hello to the snow leopard with her very long tail that she uses as a scarf, and had some time at the end of the day to explore the zoo with our groups. It's been an amazing week, and we're so grateful to our volunteers, our educator Anna, and to the Edmonton Valley Zoo!
We learned lots about animal conservation on Day 4 of Zoo School! We discussed souvenirs that can help or harm wildlife, and observed the differences between turtle and tortoise shells! The students got to see a meat-popsicle enrichment with the fur and harbour seals, and we also watched a food enrichment with Sulawe the gibbon (whose favourite TV show we learned is Scooby Doo). Anna introduced us to Rosie the serval cat who is quite elegant an impressive jumper, and we met some frogs, snakes, geckos, fruit bats, and sloths in the afternoon!
Day 3 of Zoo School continued to include lots of adventures and learning! We got to observe a river otter named Steve get trained, and learned about how river otters live in cold climates like Alberta. Steve is named after Steven Tyler of Aerosmith for his impressive vocalizations, and we really enjoyed hearing him chat with us! We spent a lot of time in the commissary learning all about how the zookeepers feed the animals in the zoo (especially the picky red pandas!), and we had many interesting ethical conversations about feeding the carnivores meat. We met a bearded dragon named Pumpkin and a python named Sid, and compared those two animals. There was even a Lucy the elephant spotting in the afternoon which was very exciting!
Day two of Zoo School included a lot of learning about seals, animal training, and a tortoise named Frodo! We got to get up close watch the zoo trainers work with a northern fur seal and a harbour seal, and we were very impressed with all of their learned behaviours (especially their vocalizations and clapping)! Students observed the animal they're becoming experts on in their groups, and we practiced our training skills with an entertaining game as well. Our educator Anna had us interact with some mystery artifacts (the trickiest one to identify was rhinocerous skin), and we learned about how many of these items come from items the government had to confiscate from people because of how they illegally threatened animal conservation. The sea turtle shoes and river otter fur have been at the zoo for many years! We finished the day off learning about Frodo the tortoise and his UV vision. He was very curious and adventurous, and we learned that tortoises aren't as slow as they're cracked up to be!
What an exciting day we had to kick of Zoo School! We met our educator Anna who we'll learn lots from over the course of the week. The zoo was closed to the public today, so we had it all to ourselves, and many of the animals seemed extra comfortable showing off some entertaining antics with so few people there. Students have been placed into five different groups for our week at the zoo, so each group has been assigned to become experts on either the lynx, lemurs, seals, meerkats, or gibbon over the course of the week. The groups closely observed and took notes on their animals today, and they'll continue to do that over the course of the week. The lynx group got to see the lynx eat some fresh quail, the lemur group got to observe them socializing, the seal group heard some very vocal "screaming," the meerkat group noticed them exploring and cozying up in their bed, and the gibbon group witnessed some very dramatic "singing" and energetic swinging around his habitat.
Our animal encounter today was with an albino Nelsons Milk Snake named Novel this morning, and it was really neat to observe her quirky behaviours and learn about how she constricts her prey. We got to observe and touch some python jaws and scales as well as we were learning about snakes. This afternoon we had a talk with a reindeer expert about these fascinating animals, and she brought them out to the garden so we could get up close to them and watch them forage for food and assert themselves with their antlers. We also got to touch the velvet on one of their old antlers. At the end of the day groups got to explore the zoo, so we enjoyed hearing the arctic wolf howl, seeing the gibbon show of his teeth, watch the Goeldi's monkeys play, and observe the red pandas playing with each other. We can't wait to learn more tomorrow! With the extremely cold temperatures this week, we had fun with a few experiments in the chilly outdoors! We learned about how the Mpemba effect causes hot water to freeze very quickly, and made frozen bubbles with some glycerin and dishsoap. It certainly was a great opportunity to reinforce our learning on hot and cold temperatures from our Matter unit!
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Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. Archive
April 2024
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