Magnets are Magnificent!

It is truly amazing what can happen when you pose a question to a child. The wheels start to turn in their brains, their bodies start to move and voila... they work until they discover the answer! We began our studies on Magnets and I decided to do an Inquiry Based Approach to our learning. At each center I posed a question and the students had to, through hands on activities, figure out the answer! The best part is all the smiles on their faces!

Students were asked "What can you build with Magnets?" They quickly realized.. you can build a lot! These students here had created a HUGE chain of magnets that had to be put together using the proper poles of the magnets. They also discovered.. there is a breaking point! When they went to lift up their creation.. it fell apart!! You can see the devastation on their faces. Don't worry, they got over it quickly and began building again!

At this station students were asked "What is magnetic in our classroom?" The answer: a lot! Students went around testing all sorts of things in our classroom. They recorder their results. How do you know if it is magnetic you ask? Well they thought "If the magnet sticks to it, that means it is magnetic!" 

Students were asked "Are all metals magnetic?" Students decided to test the materials that were provided to figure out the answer to the question. They recorded their results on the sheet and realized that not all metals are magnetic! Some students were very surprised by this information! Another question that was asked was "Are all magnets the same strength?" I left a few different magnets that were different sizes and shapes. Students thought they would test the magnets by determining how many paper clips the magnet could hold. The answer: the bigger the magnet the stronger its strength! 

More building fun! 

Our thoughts on Because of Winn-Dixie

The students had so much to say and share when we read Because of Winn-Dixie... Here is a peek at some of our responses!

Our character study of Opal

Students drew pictures to represent some of Opal's characteristics!

Connections, lists and compare and contrasting! We can do it all.

Questioning while we read is so important. Here are some examples of our thin and thick questions. These responses are about a mistake the students have made in the past. Uh oh... 

Students had to find evidence in the story to support their pictures.

 

These students believed Opal had a big heart.

A connection response to Winn-Dixie howling.

Because of Winn-Dixie...

For the past two months we have been reading a wonderful novel called Because of Winn-Dixie! Each day I have read a few chapters aloud to the students and they were able to follow along with their own book. It was a page turner and kept the students always wanting more (just what us teachers love)! The story is about a young girl who moves to a new town and has no friends. She unexpectedly meets a furry friend Winn-Dixie. She decides to claim the dog as her own to save him from the pound and little did she know it would change her entire life... The story had excellent themes of love, friendship, abandonment, and looking deeper into people and accepting them for who they are (flaws and all)! We had amazing conversations and students had very deep thinking
questions that sparked awesome conversations and stories in our classroom. We had a reading response journal where students could write their connections, feelings and thoughts down. We are gearing up to watch the movie, so we can compare and contrast the plot line in both!

What a Wonderful World!

To start thinking about Thanksgiving, we watched a video clip called "What a Wonderful World" by Louis Armstrong. The video had scenic images of tress, flowers, rainbows and sunsets. This inspired us to talk about our world and what we have to be thankful for. We brainstormed all the things that we were thankful about. We made sure we were thinking deeply about what is important and that did not include our 3DS! We are very thankful for our families, the Earth, nature and our life. We decided that we are thankful for our wonderful world.
-The Eagles

Our Land, Our Country!

The Eagles have been learning all about their identity. Where we live is a big part of who we are. We read the book "O Canada" by Ted Harrison. He is a famous Canadian artist! We read his book as a class and identified what Territory we lived in. We used his technique of bright colours and scenic paintings to inspire our art. We started by brainstorming what is important in the Northwest Territories. The students thought we should include the northern lights, dog sleds, an inukshuk or the frozen land. Once we had our outline we used wax crayons to colour in. To finish our masterpieces off we did a water colour wash over top to give it a bright shine! Aren't they great?

The Patterns That Keep On Growing...

Check out the patterns we made in 3B! We are working on increasing patterns. These patterns get BIGGER as we build them. We always follow a rule to tell us how to build our pattern and how to add to it! What do you know about patterns?

We can work together to build our patterns!

 

 These patterns just kept on growing!

Can you tell what rule these students used to create their pattern?

Welcome!

What a great first week we had in our class! It has been so much fun getting to know each other this week. As a class we have been busy brainstorming classroom expectations. We thought if we followed three simple rules we would have a great year! We are practicing being respectful of our self, others and our environment. So far, we are doing great! We have been learning how to be safe online. Can you remember what YAPPY means? It will help you to surf smart on the Internet! Keep your eyes open in the hallways soon. We have decorated a smart cookie and given you our secret recipe of what it takes to be a "Smart Cookie"! Here we are in the picture making our cookies!

We are 3B

Welcome to our class blog. We are an awesome class of grade threes and we have 22 students in our class! We go to Range Lake North School. It's in Yellowknife. Yellowknife is an extreme place. It is in the north part of Canada. It gets SUPER cold in the Winter! Sometimes it gets to -50 degrees Celsius. We can't go outside at Recess when it is this cold out! It snows a lot up here and our lakes freeze over. Yellowknife is one of the best places to see the Northern Lights! We also have Great Slave Lake. It is one of the deepest lakes in Canada. Yellowknife is a small city, but we LOVE it! Our class is special because we are respectful of ourselves, others and our environment. We are super students! We are great at reading. We are building STAMINA and learning to stay focused during reading time. We are really good at Math. We have a Number Wonder wall to help us with our numbers. We are a safe class and love to blog. Thanks for visiting our blog!