Lego Robotics

The students worked collaboratively building lego robots. They needed to follow step by step instructions to build their robot. Their next step was to program their robot's movements. Students had a great time working on this and are looking forward to working with the robots again.

April 12 - 23

Please select one of the following choices to do as your homework this week.

1) Compare two 3D figures. Make sure to talk about the faces, vertices, edges, stacking, rolling and any other similarities or differences. (Use a list or a t-chart)

2)Create a presentation using Google Docs or PowerPoint Presentation (Must include at least 5 slides.) The topic is your choice.

3) Draw a flag of the country you were born in or the country your parents came from. Please do this on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.

4) Interview your parents or a friend of the family. You can interview them about what grade 3 was like for them or another topic of your/their interest. You must have at least 4 questions.

5) Create a poster about a topic of your choice.

Large Cities

-have a large population
-many types of occupations and many of each one
-provide a wide variety of services (police, medical care, restaurants, hotels)
-have more pollution created by factories and vehicles

Therefore we know that larger cities are urban areas.

Gotta Keep Reading

A middle school in Florida changed the words to the Black-Eyed Peas song "I Gotta Feeling" and the results are fantastic! We really enjoyed this video.

Writing Conversations

The students in my class are learning about how to include a conversation in their story. Here is an example that we created together.


The students walked into the classroom, but it did not look like a regular classroom.

"Wow!" Kenedy exclaimed.

"I can't believe it!" cried Madison.

The room had been transformed into a circus. The room was a large circus tent with acrobats on high wires, elephants and clowns.

"Ladies and gentleman, be prepared for the most spectacular thrill of your life." exclaimed Mrs. Pessoa "Welcome to our new class."

Julia said, "I love watching acrobats on high wires."

"I want to be an acrobat when I grow up." said Cassie.

Fishing Community

-usually a smaller population
-the main resource is fish and seafood
-have to be near a lake, river or ocean
-fishing is the main job in fishing communities, many other jobs are related to processing the fish
-main transportation are ships, boats, cars, some trains, trucks and buses

We think that a fishing community can be either an urban or rural community depending on many things.

Farming Communities

-they have many resources including fruits and vegetables
-another resource they have is animals (cows, pigs, chickens, goats)
-they have less pollution
-there is lots of open space
-generally they have a smaller population

For all of these reasons we know that a farming community is a rural community.

Mystery Story

Here is a great example of a mystery story written by one of our students. Enjoy!

The murder mystery of Dr. Burns

Hi, I’m Terence. I work for the police, and I’m a detective. One nice day, a young police said “Dr. Burns died at the train station.”

We all got in the van and zoomed to the train station. Once we got there, there was no sign of anyone! But Dexter the dog spotted fresh car tracks out side the train station. We followed the car tracks, and realized that it was from Dr. Burn’s car!

The car tracks led us to the Central park and a red minivan. We peeked inside the back seat and saw Dr. Burns, dead with 3 shots in his heart!

Dexter & I spotted a whole lot of fingerprints. We brought them to Dr. Jack the scientist to analyze the fingerprints.

When we got to Dr. Jack’s lab, we spotted him working on a robot. “Hello!” Dr. Jack yelled. “What brought you folks?” I showed him the finger prints. He then analyzed the finger prints and told us that the finger prints were Dr. Hunters finger prints. (Dr. Hunter is a very good friend of mine!)

We all got in the car and drove to Dr. Hunter’s house. We knocked on Dr. Hunter’s door and he came to the door himself. Dexter jumped on the “killer” and we took him to jail.

Now, we went back to Dr. Burns’s body and spotted a note on his chest. It said “The real shooter lives at 22 Ave drive.” We realized that we’ve arrested the wrong person. We drove to the real shooter, arrested him and finally released Dr. Hunter.

The end

By: Terence

Urban and Rural 2

Some more presentations about communities around Ontario.

Urban and Rural

The students have been learning about the different communities in Ontario. Here are some of their presentations.

Urban and Rural

What type of community would you rather live in, an urban or a rural community?