Submitted by: Mary Gallant, 3rd Grade Teacher
Third graders spent the first part of the year learning about weather! They looked at data of weather across the world. The students wrote poems about weather in a favorite place they have visited or would like to visit. Then the students learned about all different kinds of extreme weather. They learned about hurricanes, blizzards, thunderstorms, hail storms and floods.
As the students were learning about these different kinds of extreme weather they were thinking about how they could build a house to withstand that type of weather. The students started to work in groups to build their houses. They had to use recycled materials to build their structure. Some of the materials were cardboard, plastic bottles, cereal boxes, chopsticks and plastic bowls.
When the students were ready to test, we brought in all sorts of weather to throw at them. We flooded the houses with water, dropped snow on the roof for blizzards, threw ice and wind at the thunderstorm houses and we used a leaf blower to reenact a tornado. After their house had been tested, they needed to think about what they would change about their house and what worked well.