Landform Dictionaries

 As an introduction to our World Cultures unit of study, scholars researched a variety of landforms using online sources (World Book Online, among others) to write a brief definition and to describe its importance to our world.  

Scholars in each class contributed pages to their class dictionary.

World Geography and Cultures

Our third grade team is immersed in learning about world geography.  During reading, writing, and theme times we are working to answer the following question: How do geography, climate, and natural resources affect the way people live?

Mrs. Ayer's students are so excited about everything they are learning about cultures in various countries that they created a movie to share.  Listen to some of what they've learned.

Miss Darby's class is working to teach others in their group about what they've learned about a culture.  They are using the teaching to help them make sense and synthesize all that they are learning!

Learning about Landforms

This week, third graders at RES embarked on a new adventure that will be taking us around the world to study how the geography of a country's land impacts how the people in that country live and their culture.  But first, we had to refamiliarize ourselves with maps and geography...

After a quick refresher, students in each class created their collective Landform Dictionaries to use for future reference.  We'll be looking back at these in upcoming weeks as we travel around the globe.

Check them out:

Our Place in this World!

(This post originally appeared on Mrs. Rankin's Enrichment at RES blog.)

Third graders have spent the beginning of the school year in enrichment thinking about their place in this world. Geography and understanding sense of place is an important part of the third grade curriculum.  This study also supports our enrichment goals of continuing to learn about ourselves while giving us a context for our passions and interests.  I love beginning the year with this project because it gives students a chance to be creative and work in groups as we learn. 

Students selected a place, and then worked in groups to show this place.  Next the class used an iPad to film and create an iMovie.  Below are the finished results!  Students celebrate our place in his world and we hope you will enjoy their creations.

  

Pilot Project: Minecraft

Mrs. Rankin worked with a small group of third graders recently to try out Minecraft (the oh-so-popular building video game) as a possibility for sharing research related to our recent World Geography research project.

Here's an excerpt from Mrs. Rankin's blog about the project:

Due to the small group nature of our project we were able to team students together so that experts could support novice players.  Next, we explored the application.

When students understood the tool useage expectations, they got right to work! I could clearly see their informational knowledge as they designed, built and created!  Students had to problem solve how to create animals, stop ice from melting, and more.  They also collaborated on how to add labels (most settled on capturing a screenshot of their biome and then editing it in Explain Everything, but then others found a way to make signs inside of Minecraft!)

This project was a way to share already understood information.  Students could have certainly drawn a picture or written a description of their understanding...but I believe the Minecraft tool added three additional components to their learning:  a need to collaborate and learn from each other, high (very high!) engagement, and problem solving.
Below are two images created during our small group pilot.

We're hoping that we can bring this experience to ALL third graders next year!  Thank you, Mrs. Rankin, for helping us to pilot this project.  You can read Mrs. Rankin's entire post here on her Enrichment at RES blog.

 

 

Our Place in the World

This post originally appeared on Mrs. Rankin's Enrichment at RES blog.

Third graders have spent the last few weeks of enrichment class thinking about their place in the world.  World geography is one of the social studies units which students will focus on in grade 3, and by starting with this project students had an opportunity to think about their geographical place on an introductory level.  This was also a great opportunity for us to get to know each other as a class of learners, and practice collaborative group work skills which we will use all year long! Students selected a place in this world they wished to share. Next they worked with a small group to design a three dimensional way to show that place.  Students used clay, popsicle sticks, maps, flags, cardboard, technology, and much more to create their place.  Once all of the creations were complete, we worked as a class to create an iMovie that shared our place in this world-- beginning with ourselves as a group of learners and then growing all the way up to our Planet Earth! Throughout this project students were engaged and enthusiastic, and they really worked as cohesive teams!

This work is a great foundation as we will spend time later in the year digging deeper into our understanding of world geography.
Third graders hope you will enjoy our iMovie Presentations!

Mrs. Ayer's Class:



Mrs. Ankerson's Class:


Miss Darby's Class:

Science in Antarctica!

Yesterday, third graders has the opportunity to participate in a webinar presented by Time for Kids with David Bjerklie (a TFK writer), Peter West (a scientist with the National Science Foundation) and Jean Pennycook (a penguin researcher).

We learned some fascinating information through the webinar...check it out:

• Antarctica is a continent located at the South Pole and is the size of the United States and Mexico combined!


• 98% of the continent is covered by ice, some of it is 3 miles thick!  Scientists have recently discovered that there are rivers and lakes under all of the sheets of ice on the continent.


• It is 3 times higher than any other continent.


• Antarctica is a desert, receiving less than 8 inches of precipitation each year.


• It is the coldest place on earth.  The mean temperature is -76˚F; the coldest temperature ever recorded was -128.6˚F.


• Yesterday, January 23, the temperature at McMurdo Station was 30˚F.  (It was 8˚F in Richmond, VT!)


• Mount Erebus is an active volcano on the continent.

While watching the webinar, we kept notes on our Wows! and Wonders...

[caption id="attachment_209" align="aligncenter" width="584"] Third graders gathered to watch the webinar LIVE! from Antarctica.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_212" align="aligncenter" width="584"] We were shocked to learn that Antarctica was warmer than Richmond, VT![/caption]

Thank you Time for Kids and edWeb for this fantastic opportunity!

Check out the Time for Kids Antarctica website for more information.  Miss Darby's friend, Sheryl, has lived on Antarctica supporting the scientists researching on the continent.  You can find her story here.  You can also explore the Twitter chat where classrooms just like ours all asked questions of the scientists in the webinar by following #edwebchat.