Harris- Grade 3 Ramsay

 Our whole last week was packed with wonderful learning experiences! We had beautiful weather on our field trip to the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary. Thank you to our volunteers who kindly joined us! We had a great time learning about the specific habitat at the Sanctuary and the incredibly diverse population of birds, mammals and insects found in the grasslands, forest, water and riparian. Time was also spent learning about pollinating insects and their vital role in our ecosystem. One specific pollinating insect that was particularly fascinating was the leaf cutter bee. These amazing bees cut leaves to construct nests in cavities (mostly in rotting wood) and create multiple cells in the nest, each with a single large and pollen for the larva to eat. Leaf cutting bees are important pollinators of wildflowers, fruits, vegetables and other crops. We also learned about many other common insects, their lifecycle and their adaptations.  Our afternoon was spent walking through this wond...

 This week has been busy! We have been working on many wonderful learning tasks to help represent a variety of learning outcomes. For example, in Math, the grade two and three classes have discovered the joy of playing board games and creating one. This week, their task has been to design a math board game that, when played, helps practice a concept we have learned this year from numbers sense, pattern and relations, shape and space or statistics. Before starting, we shared our experience about the qualities that make a good board game. The suggestions were wonderful and helped establish the quality of work we strive for.   We look forward to finishing our games and playing them in class this week.  This student even applied his learning as it relates to 3-D nets and decided to create his own dice from a cube net. Way to go!!!  In physical education this week I introduced the students to a game that I used to love to play as a child called Jumpsies. It was a real hit...

 This week we spent time writing our last full story of the year. We have been learning to create a story based on a visual prompt. The students did a wonderful job predicting who would the character or characters be in the story, where would it take place, how did the character find himself in the current situation, what problem occurred, how does the predicament resolve itself and lastly, what is life like for the character once the problem has resolved. We are also learning the benefits of sharing our story with a peer and paying close attention to revising and editing our written work.  Our picture prompt! This week, we had a lovely time on our community walk, looking for invertebrate animals. We were fortunate to find several examples of invertebrates in various stages in their lifecycle. Our exploration was overshadowed by the excitement to see that the crayfish had now come out of hibernation and were back in full force, crawling along the bottom of the river! The stude...

A big thank you to all of our volunteers who joined us at the zoo on Wednesday. The students had a wonderful time enjoying the wonderful weather and appreciating the animals. Our learning and research will continue in the classroom as we discover more about a specific animal chosen from the North American Wild exhibit. While at the zoo, each group was responsible for learning about their preferred animal habitat, life cycle, lifespan, diet, adaptations and any other interesting facts.  In science this week, we were introduced to the principles of geology and archaeology by excavating a cookie. This cookie excavation helped the students understand how important it is to be careful while excavating fragile artifacts. They also learned how an excavation can destroy a site and why recording the location of artifacts is crucial to preserving archaeological knowledge. The chocolate chips served as the artifacts in this activity, while the cookie served as the archaeological site. We lear...