Wonder Wednesdays

Since the beginning of school, our teacher has been doing Wonder Wednesday with us.  On these days, we start by looking at a picture from the internet, usually from the Wonderopolis website.  Then we spend a few minutes recording our thoughts, ideas, and wonders in our Wonder Journal.  We write questions we have, observations we make and what we think the picture is.  We can share our ideas using sentences or pictures.  After that, we share our ideas with our classmates for a few minutes.  Finally, our Wonder Wednesday time ends with our teacher showing us the question, information and video related to that Wonder.  Doing Wonder Wednesday helps us to be more curious, which is one of the Classroom Habitudes we've been talking about.  We have even started a "Wonder Wall" in our classroom, where we can post any wonder that we have.

Here are the wonders we've done so far this year.

The first week's picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

 

The actual question was: How much is a sand dollar worth?

The second week's picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

 

The acutal question was: Who invented Lego blocks?

The third week's picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

The actual question was: Do polka dots dance?  This was during "International Dot Week"!

The fourth week's picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

 

The actual question was: What inspires you?

And the most recent Wonder Wednesday picture...

Here is what some of us wrote about this picture...

The actual question was: Why do leaves change color in autumn?

We were wondering...

What did you wonder about when you saw those pictures?
What's something that you're curious about?  What question would you want to put on our Wonder Wall?

Group Challenges

It's been such a busy time!  We have been in school for a week now and it's been full of new experiences as we get settled into our new classroom.  For the first 3 days of school, we did a group challenge each day.  Each activity had us working with a few of our classmates to complete our teacher's task.

Group Challenge #1
Each group of 4 students was given some pipecleaners and two small pieces of tin foil.  Together, we had to use ONLY those materials to create something.  We shared ideas and when something didn't work, we had to figure out a solution together.  There were some very creative ideas!

 

 

Group Challenge #2

Our teacher told us the story about her friend Frankie the worm, who went out in a boat, without his life jacket on.  But when his boat capsized, Frankie had to get into his life jacket.  Each group of 3 students was given a gummy worm and a gummy lifesaver.  Our job was to work as a group to put Frankie's life jacket on him.  Sounds easy, right??  Well, the hard part was that we could only touch Frankie and the life jacket with a paper clip!  That's right...no hands!  We really had to cooperate in order to complete this challenge and we're happy to report that every group was able to save Frankie!

 

 

 Group Challenge #3
Our teacher definitely saved the hardest for last!  For this challenge, we were given some dry spaghetti and mini-marshmallows.  With only those two materials, we had to work together to create the tallest tower possible.  IT WAS HARD!  Many of the towers kept falling over.  One group had quite a tall tower but someone had to keep holding it, in order for it to stay up.  Check out our work...

 

We learned a lot about ourselves and our classmates during these challenges.  We've been learning about "classroom habitudes" and we really had to use many of them for these challenges -- perseverance, adaptability, courage, imagination and curiosity.

We were wondering...

What kinds of activities did you do with your new classmates?
What group challenges have you participated in before?

New Learning With Our Student Teacher

Right from the beginning of the year, we have had a student teacher in our classroom.  She started out watching what goes on in our classroom about once a week.  We quickly came to love the time that Ms. V (or Ms. Vanderzwan) spent in our room.  A few weeks ago, she started full time in our classroom.  Here she is introducing herself...

I am a fourth year education student from Red Deer College's Middle Years program, which is a collaborative program with the University of Alberta.  I specialize in grades 4 - 9, so I cannot wait to experience grade three - it is such a change for me! I was born in this community, and I went to school here from kindergarten to grade 12!  I live very close to the school and I love being able to walk there every morning. I am very creative and imaginative, and I love to see kids using their imaginations!  I absolutely love reading, art, sports, travelling and the outdoors.  I know that as a class we will have so much fun together, and I am already dreading leaving at the end of April.  I started coming into the classroom once a week at the beginning of September (I was even there for the first day of school!) and I've gotten to know the kids so well already.  I can't wait for us to learn from each other!  

And we can't wait to learn from her either!

She told us that she is going to be doing a lot of the teaching in our classroom as our regular teacher helps her to become an even better teacher.  For one of her first lessons, she started by having this note taped to our lockers:

We were so curious about what this was going to be all about.  She told us that we will be building a "MonstroCity" and shared this video with us.  There were so many cool monsters in that video -- we couldn't wait to get started!

In our first activity, we had to write a letter to Ms. V. telling her why we were the right person for this job.  In another activity, we had to share what we already know about building.  Here is what one of the posters looked like:

Today, we found out that we are going to have grade 4 penpals in another community who will be able to help us, because they learned all about building in grade 3.  After we read the letters they wrote to us, we wrote letters back to them telling more about ourselves and asking questions about building.

It's been an exciting start with Ms. V. and we can't wait to find out what's coming!

We were wondering...

What do you know about building?
Have you ever had a student teacher in your classroom before?