Science – Page 4 – Beyond The Desk

Are You Ready For December? The Mrhclassblog Is!!!

November 30, 2009 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

3563912840_23a0fdeccd Ahh! Flakes falling gently. Snow crunching underfoot! Snowmen being made by little Grade 3 children. Snowballs flying through the air! I love the winter season!

Wait a minute . . .

Oh. Right. I forgot.

I live in B.C now. Rain, rain, more rain and . . . . wait for it . . . that’s right! More rain! I miss the snow. Lucky for you and me. I brought some now from Alberta to the blog. I hope you enjoy it. We had a good start to the week. In science, students are quickly finishing up the first part of the science unit on building. Last week, we learned that stable objects are objects that do not tip over easily and stand up on their own. We did an experiment with a variety of containers and had a little tournament to see which one would stand the longest as the table they were standing on was tilted slowly up. From that experiment, we learned that the taller and object is, the wider the base had to be and the more weight there had to be on the bottom.

Here is a video of some kids trying to build a tall structure. Do you notice anything about their structure that matches what we learned last week and today?

Do you notice anything about these buildings? (I didn’t write it so the spelling mistakes are not mine!!)

Using that knowledge, students have now been assigned the task of designing a sippy cup for Siena that will be stable and not tip over easily. The results should be very interesting!

Our Daily 3 is now on the way to running smoothly. The Listening Centre area had a few more kinks in it than I expected. But it is working better now. Thank you to all the parents who donated machines to the class. They are working beautifully. My goal and objective now is to start working in small groups with students focusing on books and reading strategies specifically geared to their age and reading level. We will be doing novel studies and comprehension activities as a small group of no more than 4 students. It should be very good. I will also be working with individual students to hear how their reading is doing and provide individual attention on an on-going basis.

Here is our spelling for this week:
Spelling N 3

As always, here is the spelling city link. Remember that if you bring me your completed test, you can receive an extra mark on your spelling test on Friday!!! The more you practice your words using games and other activities, the stronger your neurons and axons get!!!

Our Memory Verse continues on the Christmas-y theme here at Mrhclassblog! It is from Luke 2:10:

But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.

Finally, I thought this would be good to add to our collection of videos. This is from a cd of Science music we were listening to last week. It is by a group called “They Might Be Giants”. Anyone from my generation might remember them. Anyway, they have been getting into children’s music lately and this CD has a great collection of songs. The added DVD has the songs as videos and I found some of them on youtube. Enjoy!

Note Home Today!

November 17, 2009 eoin24 Comments 1 comment

logo1 Hello!
We had a fantastic day today! The students worked hard, listened well and made lots of good choices. We had a fun day with lots of great stuff happening. There was a note that went home today regarding the upcoming science projects students will be doing in class as their final projects for our Buildings and Structures Unit. Here is what the note says. I have also put a copy of the note in the box.net widget on the right side of the blog if you would like to download a copy.

Dear Parents

The Grade 2/3 students have been working very hard in Science. Our first unit this year was on Building and Structures. Throughout this unit, students were learning all the ways that buildings can be built to make them strong and stable. This includes using strong shapes like circular columns, triangles and supportive structures like arches and beams.

For their final project, students will be taking everything they have learned and apply those concepts and ideas to building an actual model structure. Using materials brought from home, students will choose one of three structures to build. Through this process, each group will also have a budget to stay within when “purchasing” their materials, as well as strict guidelines to follow in order to successfully complete the project.

As we are building models from actual materials, it would be appreciated if you could send any of the following recycled material with your child to school:

Popsicle sticks                                                             Milk cartons
Cereal boxes/cardboard                                          Shoe boxes
Empty paper towel rolls                                           toilet paper rolls
Scrap pieces of string (any type) and wool        Straws
Yogurt and margarine containers                        Pipe Cleaners
Strawberry baskets
Spools                                                                              Flexible wire
Toothpicks                                                                     Clothespins
Paper Clips                                                                    Egg cartons

Please ensure that containers have been washed before sending them. We appreciate your assistance.

We did our Daily 3 today with all the 3 elements of the program. It went very well, though we had some technical difficulties with the equipment! However, we worked through everything and it very well for the first time. The students also wanted me to put this video on the blog. I don’t know why. I showed them the video today during our Daily 3 time to show what another class did to learn the Acronym “IPICK” which is a way to help students pick books that are a good fit for them. It’s a little hard to understand but the students thought it was hilarious!

Cloudy with A Chance of Lots of News!

November 16, 2009 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

Franklin_Media_Student_Reading It has been a couple of very busy weeks recently. The students have been working hard and we are now just putting the finishing pieces onto our Daily 3 Language Arts Program. It has been a long process but the modeling and all the work that went into setting it and getting the students comfortable with the process is paying off. We started the last piece. “Listening To Reading” today with the introduction of the media players. Students will be listening to audiobooks on tape, CD and the computer. Hearing professional readers reading pieces of literature is a great way for students to build reading fluency. Hearing the reading on the tape or CD while following along in the books helps the brain hear and practice good, fluent reading. As well, we will be using a website called RAZ Kids as part of the Listening to Reading Program. This website allows students to read books at their own level at home. The system has been set up for their level already. Once the students log in, they can read books, have books read to them, and take quizzes about their book to earn stars which they can use to add things to their “Rocket Ships“. Once our program is flowing well, I will release access to the students to work on it at home. For now, we are just using it at school.

t2s_home_image_6 So with the addition of the “Listening To Reading” portion of the Daily 3 program, we now have all elements in place. Students will now be choosing on of the three parts of the program to do each day, with most days allowing opportunities for more than one choice. By the end of the week, all students should have had a chance to complete all three areas. This will also be replacing our D.E.A.R time which was a free reading time.

The three areas students will be working on now, in summary, are:

Read to Self: Students working on reading by themselves focusing on reading the words, reading the pictures and re-telling the story.
Read To Others: Students read with a partner choosing either to read the same book or read different books. As they reading they are either practicing reading fluency or reading comprehension. Students have summarize each page or section that has been read to them to show that they are listening and comprehending.
Listening To Reading: The newest section of the program, students read books while listening to them as a way to practice fluency and vocabulary.

We have also talked about how to pick good books that are the “right fit”. A “Good Fit” book is one where the student gets to pick the book, they are picking it for a purpose and they are interested in it. It should also be a book where they are able to comprehend most of what they are reading AND it is a book where most of the words are familiar and can be read by the child with high accuracy.

If you come across any used cd players or tape players you would be willing to donate, please continue to send them our way. We can always use more!

Here is the spelling for this week:

Spelling N 1

I have also included the link for Spelling City here. Remember, if you print off your certificate and bring it in, it will count as an extra point on your spelling test on Friday. Also, parents, if you do not have access to a printer or it breaks down, just sign your child’s planner with a note stating that they did complete the test and got 100% and that will count as well. Make sure to tell your child to show it to me as I may not see it in time otherwise.

Our memory verse this week is from Matthew 7:7:

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.

The students have once again earned a party, which we will have on Friday afternoon. I have asked the students to bring a snack for the class if they are able to. As the year is now fully into swing and expectations have been set and understood, students will be having to earn more stars in order to earn further parties. They are now working on 50 stars and will then be required to earn 75 stars. I have stressed to the students that these are their choices as to whether they earn stars or have stars taken away. By stressing this, I am helping students to understand that they are the ones that decide their own behaviour; that it is not me arbitrarily deciding when they get stars or have stars taken away. They are the ones that choose. I believe that this is a very important distinction.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for the hard work and effort that went into the Science Challenge. All the vehicles showed great creativity and team work! It was so neat to see how such simple materials could result in so many different yet wonderful realizations. I hope that you also found this a rewarding time as you had a chance to work with your child and see the wonderful capabilities a child has for creativity. Now, don’t worry! We will not be doing this every week but about once a month or so I will throw another challenge out there for your family! I have taken photos of all the projects which I will turn into an Animoto for you. For now though, I thought I would end off with a science video as a reward for getting this far and reading all the way to the end.

Great Art Resource and A Hilarious Video!

November 12, 2009 eoin24 Comments 4 comments

We have been using this art website in the class this year and I have tried to add it to our blog links on the side. However, for some reason, it is not wanting to show up. The kids have been asking for it almost everyday. So I thought I would put it here so that you had a quick way to get to the site. The site is called Artpad and it is a really nice and simple site that allows you to create artwork with your mouse, add a frame and display it digitally in an art gallery with your choice of artwork hanging around it. Click on the picture to go to the site.

Please, remember that your Science Challenge projects are due tomorrow! Finally, I found this great site a few days ago and thought you would also enjoy it. It was just an ordinary day at the food court in New York when, suddenly, something strange happened . . .

Oobleck Machine Project

October 14, 2009 eoin24 Comments 1 comment

I know that our Oobleck projects have been done for awhile but I wanted to have a chance to showcase our Oobleck machines. If you remember, we had designed our Oobleck machines to deal with the properties we had discovered in Oobleck. We had discovered that Oobleck gets hard when it is squeezed, soft when it is loose in your hand, and is somewhat sticky. Using those rules of Oobleck, students needed to design a vehicle that could handle those conditions as if it was going to be having to drive on a lake of Oobleck. Now, you can just come and see the finished projects in the hallway outside Mr. Shinness’ office, but that wouldn’t be using cool technology would it? So, here are all the finished projects in an awesome Animoto video.

If you would like to create your own bowl of wonderfully, thick and messy Oobleck, here is a recipe you can use.

Oobleck was the name given to a type of slime in a Dr. Seuss book that was capable of gumming up a whole kingdom. The oobleck the you can make for a science project isn’t gummy, but it does have interesting properties of both solids and liquids. It normally behaves like a liquid or jelly, but if you squeeze it in your hand, it will seem like a solid.

Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 10-15 minutes

Here’s How:

Mix 1 part water with 1.5 to 2 parts cornstarch. You may wish to start with one cup of water and one and a half cups of cornstarch, then work in more cornstarch if you want a more ‘solid’ oobleck. It will take about 10 minutes of mixing to get nice homogeneous oobleck.
Mix in a few drops of food coloring if you want colored oobleck.

Finally, as we have two weeks of short weeks, I have decided to still do the spelling lists this week. However, we will do the spelling test on Tuesday of next week. I will put the spelling words on the blog tomorrow along with the link to the Spelling City site. As we ran out of time for our memory verse on Friday due to skating, we will be doing the same memory verse this Friday.

Grade 3’s have a quiz on the 0, 1, 2, 5, and 10 times tables this Thursday.

Being A Scientist

September 23, 2009 eoin24 Comments 1 comment

What a busy day!!!

Today in science we ended off our look at Oobleck with at look at Mars. Now you may be asking what does Mars have to do with Oobleck? Well, that would be a good question!! We talked about Mars because the scientists who created the Mars Rover had to go through the same process to create the Mars Rover that the students did to create their Oobleck Machines.

In the first part of our Oobleck unit, the students had to think about Oobleck, play with it, explore, discover, experiment, test, observe and use their senses. Scientists had to do the same thing. They had no idea what Mars was like and yet had to use what they had (pictures, etc) to come up with a machine that could withstand anything that might happen.

The scientists held a convention to share their ideas, discuss, argue, put ideas together and listen to each other. The students had to do the same thing to create their rules for Oobleck. Finally, both the scientists and students had to use all their observations and ideas to create and design a machine they thought would be able to function on Mars or Oobleck. We had an amazing time discussing and sharing ideas and pictures.

I also showed the students an awesome video showing the Mars Rover leaving Earth and landing on Mars and all the things the Mars Rover had to do in order to land safely and function properly on Mars once it got there. Here is the video:

Hannah’s Little Project For Mr. H

September 21, 2009 eoin24 Comments 1 comment

At the end of the last school year, one of my students gave me a gift as a thank you. However, it was not just any gift. It was a gift in the form of a project. For those of you, who were with me last year, you will remember the weekly science projects that I assigned as ways to help you to think more creatively or “outside the box”. Well, this students decided to enact some revenge upon me and, with a smile stretching from one side of the face to the other, gave me my gift. The gift also came with a note. The note explained that my homework was to make my own end of the year gift with the supplies within the zip-lock bag. Within the bag were several straw, paper clips, fruity strips of gum, bandaids, toothpicks and a gift certificate from Starbucks. With great dismay, I realized that my summer was not going to easy and that any plans I may of had for a nice relaxing break were going to be replaced by an exceedingly hard and painful summer trying to come up with something that I could make out of those strange and wacky materials.

Well, it was indeed a busy summer but, with much sweat and tears, I was able to eventually create something out of the materials Hannah gave me. I have taken pictures of my creation below and I am extremely proud of it. Here are the results below.

DSCI0053

DSCI0054

Thank you, Hannah, for making me think. Now I need to go and soak my head in some warm water to help reduce the swelling.

More Oobleck and Our First Spelling List!

September 14, 2009 eoin24 Comments 7 comments

Well, it has been an exciting day here in Grade 2/3 once again! Today for science, we started taking everything we have learned about Oobleck and it’s properties and have begun the process of designing vehicles that would be able to land/drive on an ocean of Oobleck, explore the ocean of Oobleck and be able to get off the ocean of Oobleck without being stuck.

At our last class, we had a convention. Scientists use conventions as a way to share ideas and to see what other scientists have done. At our convention, we came up with a list of important rules or properties we discovered about Oobleck. The students will have to keep these in mind as they design their Oobleck machines.

At the end of the class, we saw a little video showing what would happen if you walked or ran on Oobleck. Here is the video.

This video could help us understand how a vehicle would work on an ocean of Oobleck.

A big thank you to Aidan who discovered what would happen if you put a pan of water on a loud speaker. Aidan said that the water only splashed an made waves which is very different than what happened to the Oobleck.

On a completely different topic, here is our spelling list for the week. You can copy the words down to work on at home or you can just print a copy of the words using the option on the window below or downloading it from the Box.net widget to the right!

Spelling J2

Have a great night. Book orders are due on the 18th of September!

An Interesting Find

September 11, 2009 eoin24 Comments 6 comments

Hey everyone!!!

This week we were looking at the properties of Oobleck. Do you remember what properties are? We can find the properties of objects around us by using our 5 senses; what we see, feel, hear, smell and taste. So,

Properties are the things or words we use to describe different objects so we can tell them apart.

We played with and investigated the properties of Oobleck to help us understand what made Oobleck different from other substances like water or play-do. You had some wonderful properties you discovered as you worked with the Oobleck. We will talk about them on Friday!

I also had told you that Scientists themselves did not understand why Oobleck had such strange properties but they are working very hard to find out more just like we are!!!!

Here is a video showing what Oobleck does when you put it on top of a very loud speaker!!! What do you notice? Would water do this is you did the same thing? Why don’t you try it and find out?

Finally, here is a Star Wars video for Jacob! I hope you enjoy it!!! I thought it was really funny!

It’s Oobleck Day!!!

September 9, 2009 eoin24 Comments 0 Comment

oobleck-2 It was a busy day in the Grade 2/3 class!! Students had a full day of fun and excitement. In Science this afternoon, I told students about my discovery of an extremely strange substance. On a cruise to Alaska, my wife and I were wondering along a secluded path. As we walked along, I suddenly noticed this mysterious substance lying in pools along side the path. My wife suggested that I collect some samples to bring back to show the students. Once I had told the students how I came to find this mysterious substance, I told the students that Scientists had no knowledge of this substance and how it came to be. All they knew was that it was named Oobleck and that it was not harmful to teachers and students in grade 2/3. Students then got a chance to play with and investigate it’s properties. We also learned and discussed how we use our 5 senses to investigate the properties of objects. As the students got to play and interact with the Oobleck, the students were very thankful that they didn’t have to use their sense of taste!! However, they did make wonderful observations including that it was green and goopy!!! I love things that are green and goopy!!!

As students played with the Oobleck, they were writing down what they saw, felt, heard and smelled and recording their thoughts on pieces of paper. After discussing all their thoughts, they then had to pick the one property they felt was the most important property of Oobleck. Next Science day, we are going to review their notes and create a set of rules for Oobleck. Throughout this unit on Oobleck we are ging to be talking about Scientists and how they work through problems. It is going to be very interesting!!!!!

Parents:

Please practice adding and subtracting facts with your child. Over the summer, some memories can become hazy and students can have difficulty remembering their adding and subtracting facts up to 18. Please review these for them so we can sharpen those response times!!! It also helps provide a solid base for all their math work if they don’t have to be slowed down remembering their basic facts. If you need some ways to create flash cards for your child, check out Flashcard Creator or just make your own on cut rectangles of construction paper. You can also buy them from many grocery stores like Superstore or Staples.

Beyond The Desk

The Class Blog for Mr. Hancock's Grade 5/6 Class

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