Wondering and Thinking on Wednesday and Thursday

Wondering Wednesday was all about our wonderings and questions connected to our virtual field trip to the Borneo rainforest.  Even before heading to the gym to watch the video on the big screen we were on fire with questions connected to our learning about hearing and sound.  We brainstormed what the word acoustics means.  Our thoughts included:  sound waves, vibrations, volume (loudness and softness), high pitch, low pitch, atoms and different mediums, echo and echolocation.  We then watched a video to expand our understanding of acoustics and learned two new vocabulary words:  ultrasound and infrasound.  Noah immediately made a text to self connection to his mom because this is her job.  We learned that and ultrasound machine creates sound waves that bounce back off organs  in the body.  Very cool.  From this we inferenced that if ultrasound means inside, then maybe infrasound means outside.   We later discovered by looking it up that infrasound waves are very low frequency sound waves that can not be heard with the human ear.  Elephants and whales are two animals that communicate using infrasonic sound waves.

Here are all three grade three classes in the gym watching the virtual field trip video:

It was an adventure to learn together in the gym and watch the live stream video on the big screen.  The field biologist gave us loads of data about the sounds in the rain forest.  We expanded our knowledge about biodiversity as we were introduced to the many different species of plants and animals that live in the rain forest.  For example, the endangered Bornean Orangutan, the Sun Bear, the Rhinoceros Hornbill and the White Gibbon.  We played a game where we had to identify the different sounds these animals make.

We learned a new vocabulary word bioacoustics.  This is the science of study sound in nature.  

It is very important for field scientists because they can use the sound stories to track changes in ecosystems over time.  

Thinking Thursday has taken us to Paraguay, we read another amazing book today during our Learning Commons time, it is called Ada's Violin:  The story of the Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay.  Oh my goodness this book transformed our thinking.  We made so many connections to sound waves and the power of imagination and upcycling.  In this book a group of people in  a town called Cateura decided to take action and make musical instruments out of a garbage dump their town is built on. Here is a video for you to learn more about the  Recycled Orchestra of Paraguay

The book:

What treasures can be found in garbage?  The answers are endless, as long as you are creative and can imagine.  For these young people the instruments changed their lives forever, they decided to make a different life for themselves.  They became global citizens who inspire the world.

We ended our day today by giving mindful feedback to the Kindergarten students in Mrs. Steckly's class next door to us.  They created some amazing art using natural objects to paint with.  They had posted a comment

page on their bulletin board asking for feedback on specific questions.  Here are pictures of us looking carefully at the artwork to make connections and generate questions to spark our own learning as well as our Kindergarten friends.