Lawn vs Garden Final Presentations

After watching all 29 presentations, the class did a modified weight factor analysis to determine the presentations that best met the criteria.

Congratulations to Macy and Jersey! They will now work together to combine their presentations to meet the specific requirements the class determined are necessary for our presentation to Port Colborne City Council.

Congratulations to Sabian, Josh, Jersey and Jadon who were selected by the class to take the role of presenters.

You can view Macy's presentation here and Jersey's presentation here.

Experiment Design

We will be designing experiments to observe the effects of contaminated water (i.e. salt water, acidic water and water contaminated with cigarette butts) on the growth and development of plants.

Today we reviewed independent, dependent and controlled variables as well as the criteria for writing procedural instructions. Grade 3 students will be using our procedures to replicate our experiments.

"Take Me Outside Week" - Part 2

We spent some time outside today choosing the perfect red maple leaves. We will be preserving these for an upcoming Remembrance Day project.

"Take Me Outside" Week - Part 1

We have several outdoor activities planned for this week.

Today's activity was connected to an experiment we will be doing as part of our ecosystems investigation. Today we carefully collected the cigarette butts that had been discarded along a 2-block stretch of Fares Street in front of the school. This image of 100 discarded butts is a graphic and unpleasant reminder that cigarette butts do not biodegrade.

Please keep following the blog to read about our experiment and what we learn.

Using Graphs to Determine Relationships

Following our independent investigation graphing a variety of equations, we had a whole class discussion today to compare graphs and determine what information we can get from looking at graphs.

One really big "ah-ha" moment came when we discussed the significance of an intersection point between 2 different lines. By comparing the ratio table data and the graphs, students realized that both lines have the same value at the intersection point.

Another key observation was that while the line C = 10 + 2n might have initially very low values, after n = 10, the C values increase rapidly. We realized that we need to consider both constant and multiplier in determining which relationship is provides better value. We discussed real-life applications of this (i.e. credit card company plans, equipment rental companies etc.)