Just another Monday...

Mondays are my longest teaching day.  I teach 6 lessons and they nearly all involve setting up and cleaning up practical investigations. I always end the day completely exhausted but also inspired. The excitement and joy I see from the students every week make all the hard work worthwhile. Here are a few things we have been up to on Mondays since the break. I will try to make sure to not wait so long between posts next time. 

The third graders are studying people who made a difference. In science we talked about van Leeuwenhoek and practiced using microscopes. 

Grade 4 students looked at electrical conductors and insulators and made a circuit to practice Morse Code in case they had to send an emergency message after a volcanic eruption or earthquake.  This sponge was not a conductor. To be fair this photo is from a Tuesday but the other grade 4 class did this activity on a Monday. 

On another Monday, we talked about the Nobel Prize in Medicine winners from 2004, Richard Axel and Linda B. Buck. They discovered smell receptors and helped us to learn more about how the brain processes smells. Students took turns guessing some smells from cinnamon to toothpaste to vinegar. 

 We practiced our observation skills and recorded our guesses. We talked about how important the sense of smell is. 

Grade 4 students used their knowledge of conductors and insulators along with facts from their Active Planet unit to make an electrical quiz game to test their friends. If you touch the correct answer a lightbulb glows. 

We had to use a conductor (foil) to connect the correct answers and an insulator (tape) to make sure the light only lit up when the correct answer was chosen. 

Finally here is a grade 3 student with her magnetic toy that we started making at the end of the Bright Sparks unit. 

Here are some of our learning goals. The first two had a little overlap because we have moved electricity from grade 4 to grade 3 but I wanted this year's grade 4 students to get a chance to learn about electricity. 

2.25 Know that some materials conduct electricity 

2.36 Be able to construct electrical circuits to make devices work  

2.1  Be able to use simple scientific equipment

2.34 Understand that different materials are suited for different purposes

2.1 Be able to carry out simple investigations: Using evidence to draw conclusions, Recording and communicating their observations and findings in a variety of ways.