We have become expert surveyors! We spent several mornings of building different kinds of diagrams together, including a pictogram of our favourite snacks, and a bar graph of our eye colours. Then, I helped each student write out their own survey question, and they thought of a few choices to put on their sheet. During reading buddies, each student walked around with their survey, clipboard and sheet of stickers, and asked lots of classmates and buddies their question. It was really fun to see them all engaged and building their graphs with stickers. This is a great introduction to what they will be doing next year in the data management strand.
Many students enjoyed this activity so much, that they have been making additional surveys in their own time, and doing it all over again!
This week we also did a super cool science experiment to address another question from our list. This one was about how the earth absorbs water. We talked about why we want soil to absorb water. Many students mentioned that plants need to drink - yes. Someone actually mentioned what I was hoping - to prevent a flood. We took the opportunity to talk about the flooding that's been going on in parts of Ontario, and how it can damage people's homes (like my leaky basement!). We wanted to figure out which material best absorbs water, the way a sponge does. We tested 5 materials: sand, soil, soil with grass, rocks (like what roads are made of) and the sponge, for comparison. Each scientist made predictions and then poured 1/4 C of water over one of the materials until they had all received 3/4 C of rain.
Our results surprised us a little, as we didn't expect sand to be that great. However, we had noticed that the water pooled on top of the sand and overflowed over the top of the cup in addition to going through, so we talked about how our experiment might not be perfect, and that's something to consider. However, overall, sand and soil seemed to hang on to the most water, while the rocks let it all pass through quickly, meaning that it didn't absorb much at all. Each student drew the result on their experiment sheet. It was a really fun afternoon!
Here are the items we tested in this experiment:
Le sable
Le sol
Une éponge
L’herbe
Des roches
Yesterday, we had such a great time outside - we had a group of builders working together to build a large structure, some were cooking dinner or baking cookies, and I was playing a great game of baseball. I was so impressed by how everyone worked together and shared materials. And, when we had to clean everything up at the end of the day, everyone helped and made quick work of it. I told the kids how fun it had been for me, and I hope we get to do more of this. Cleaning up has sometimes been difficult, but many hands make light work and yesterday was a perfect example of this. Merci mes amis!
