November 18

Beans = Excitement

Who knew growing beans would cause such excitement and interest in our class?

As part of our plants and soil unit, we decided to plant some bean seeds! We planted 3 bean seeds each and have kept them by our classroom window. Mrs. Sullivan has been keeping the paper towel damp using a spray bottle. We did not use any soil.

Check out this video so you can try it at home, too!

We have been looking at our plants with a scientist’s eye by recording our observations on a regular basis. We are so excited when we can see the beans growing taller each day! We are nearing the end of taking care of our plants at school. They will be coming home soon where students will chat with their parents about whether they will plant them in soil or not.

Our next steps? We’ll combine science with math and will be measuring our plants. We will answer questions such as:

  • What is the average height of our tallest plants?
  • What is the average height of each student’s plant?
  • Why did some beans fare better than others?

Students have recently began presenting their AMAZING plant research projects. They researched quite a variety of plants. Here’s a few…

  • The Acacia Tree
  • Venus Fly Trap
  • Chrysanthemum
  • Lavender
  • Cactus
  • Hyperion Tree

If you could have your very own garden,

what plant would definitely be in there and why?

Category: Science and Social Studies, Teacher Talk | LEAVE A COMMENT
October 28

Going Batty for Bats

On Tuesday, our class was delighted to welcome Alyson into our room for a Skype session all the way from the USA! We Skyped for a period of about 45 minutes which seemed to fly by because she was so informative and engaging.

Alyson gave us some clues about where she was skyping from including:

  1. BBQs are famous here
  2. This state has the world’s biggest rodeo
  3. Lots of people wear cowboy hats

Yes, Alyson was talking to us from Texas!

Alyson is a bat biologist. She is a PhD candidate and studies wildlife. In her introduction, she showed us pictures of places around the world where she’s traveled and the different animals she’s worked with. She told us that her love of wildlife started at a very young age.

The students had many wonderful questions and were able to come up to the laptop and directly ask Alyson.

Here’s some of the things we learned:

  • There are 1400 species of bats and only 3 of those drink blood
  • Vampire bats are real but they leave only a papercut wound. Their saliva causes the blood not to clot
  • Bats are mammals and have fur
  • Babies are born live and are called pups
  • They hang upside down because it’s easier to escape predators when they can simply let go of the branch and take flight
  • They eat frogs, mice, insects, fruit, nectar, blood
  • Bats are found everywhere in the world except Antarctica
  • Bats are important to our ecosystem so we should care about them!
  • Bats disperse seeds and take care of pests
  • Bats can get a disease called White Nose Syndrome which is a fungus
  • Bats did not cause Covid
  • Bats are not blind and no bats have red eyes
  • Bats echo locate and each bat has its own call

Alyson was asked what was her favourite species of bat and she said it was the wrinkle-faced bat:

Today, one of my students said that bats are his new favourite animal. Who knows…we may just have a future bat scientist in our classroom right now!

Thank you, Alyson for inspiring us and spending your time with us!

 

 

Category: Science and Social Studies | 4 Comments on Going Batty for Bats
April 3

Spring Collages

In this post, I’ll be sharing all of your beautiful spring collages so they’re all in one place. Keep them coming!

 

Category: 2019-2020, Science and Social Studies | Comments Off on Spring Collages
March 20

Sprouting Seeds!

Sophia is our first classmate to share pictures of her growing wheat plants. She has recently sent us a picture of her sprouting seeds. Take a look!

What does your plant look like? What type of seed did you plant?

What do you notice? What do you wonder?

What have you been doing to help it grow?

Category: 2019-2020, Science and Social Studies, Teacher Talk | 2 Comments on Sprouting Seeds!
March 12

It’s a DIRTy Job

As we dig deeper into our soil unit, today we got our hands dirty and were able to apply some of things we’ve been learning. We were scientists exploring, analyzing, revealing, questioning, and having fun at the same time!

After some time, we then organized our earth sample into 4 categories. The students had to decide which categories those would be based on what they saw in their soil sample. For instance, big rocks, little rocks, living things, and so on. After, we did a gallery walk to see how other groups sorted their soil and we noticed many similarities!

Students discovered all sorts of interesting things in the soil. Some of these things included:

  • worms
  • centipedes (tiny ones)
  • roots
  • grass
  • sand
  • big and little rocks
  • spider

Finally, we documented our observations, as scientists do, making sure to capture every detail. Great job, Gr.3/4 scientists!

Category: 2019-2020, Science and Social Studies | 1 Comment on It’s a DIRTy Job
December 10

Reporting Live From…

Our students have recently traveled as reporters to various habitats around the world! Some traveled to very humid destinations and some even traveled to the bitterly cold Arctic!

They researched, prepared, and presented to tell you a little bit about the Desert, Arctic, Rainforest, Forest, Mountain, Ocean, and Grassland habitats.

Check it out!

Category: 2019-2020, Science and Social Studies, Teacher Talk, Tech Talk, The Arts | 4 Comments on Reporting Live From…
November 20

Habitat Posters

One of the activities the students were engaged in was researching about a specific habitat. They worked in small groups to gather their information on a template and then were asked to create a poster using the app Pic Collage.

Check out their hard work!

Category: 2019-2020, Science and Social Studies | Comments Off on Habitat Posters
November 6

Habitat Destruction

Recently, our class has been discussing how habitats are affected by various things that can destroy the homes of the animals that live there.

We will be watching these videos in class and will talk about how one of of the ways humans are impacting animal habitats is through pollution.

 

What can YOU do to support animal habitats?

How can we help protect habitats?

 

 

Category: 2019-2020, Science and Social Studies, Teacher Talk | Comments Off on Habitat Destruction
October 8

Food Chain Fun

What’s a food chain? How does energy flow from one thing to the next?

A food chain shows us how each living thing gets its food.

A fun game we played together in class today showed us how a food chain works and gave us a chance to make our own food chains in small groups. Give it a try! Click here to try it for yourself. (Make sure Adobe Flash is up to date).

 

Here is some vocabulary we’ve been exploring:

  • producers (make their own food, such as plants)
  • consumers (cannot make their own food, such as animals)
  • decomposers (break down food and eat dead plants and animals, such as bacteria, fungi, worms)
  • herbivores (plant eaters)
  • carnivores (meat eaters)
  • omnivores (both plant and meat eaters)

What type of eater are you?

Here is a short video about food chains and food webs.

 

Category: 2019-2020, Science and Social Studies | Comments Off on Food Chain Fun
September 16

We Are Scientists

Today, we launched our first science unit called Habitats. We began with a nature walk in our school’s own backyard. We were paying close attention to the sounds we were hearing all around us. In addition, we were looking very closely at our surroundings, noticing the small things and big things, the colours, textures, and so on. We made sketches, wrote down observations, and asked questions.

Habitat: A habitat is a special place where a plant or animal lives.

Take a look at us in action!

Category: 2019-2020, Science and Social Studies | 9 Comments on We Are Scientists