Making the Connection- Week Five

 Watch Me Grow
🌱A sweet little gift from the PTA team to our Grade 3s.🌱
This was a perfect opportunity for the Fiery Foxes to use their communication, thinking and social skills. The instructions, left for them by the PTA, were read aloud and all they had to do was listen, communicate and apply their teamwork skills to follow through with the instructions given to them. 
Which, they successfully did with 110% effort and positivity!



This week we were busy with assessments in Mathematics and English for Tracker Day 3.
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During Unit, the Fiery Foxes had a blast making the connection between everyday objects and items to its raw material. 
They tracked the manufacturing process of their chosen item, 
in reverse, to better visualize and understand the change it undergoes, making the connection between our everyday items and the natural resources from which them stem from.

As the Foxes were presenting their item`s raw material/s to one another, they began to notice that every single item came from a non-renewable resource in the environment, especially that of fossil fuels.




The Grade 3s were proposed with the following question:
`How many years do you think we have left of fossil fuels?`

Answers: 3,000 years; one million years; maybe one thousand years; and so on.
The Fiery Foxes were then split into groups for the next task.
Each group created their own `big company` that had to supply coal, gas or oil to other companies. 



Here is a progress report on the `Watch me Grow` project, the Foxes still using their communication, thinking and social skills to make sure their little sprouts are being looked after.

The day arrived, each group was ready to put their company to the test.




The point of this task was to help the Grade 3s engage their thinking skills, determining whether they could pick up on, and understand, the global patterns in the production and consumption of Fossil Fuels. 
They were given a piece of land (container of soba and pasta), inside this piece of land they were to extract oil, gas and coal which they could sell to smaller companies.
At the beginning of each round, they had to pay in (using monopoly money) if they wanted their company to participate in extracting a fossil fuel.
At the end of each round, they had to pay a set amount for each fossil fuel they extracted.
Finally, they also had to pay a fine if they were not careful and `destroyed` the environment they were working with.
This activity spiked competition because they knew they wanted their company to be the biggest and strongest company. 




The Grade 3s began to realize that they could not hold on to their fossil fuels and had to sell it to the smaller companies in order to go back and continue extracting from the earth for more income.
This is when they were given the opportunity to decide, within their own groups, how much money they were to sell each fossil fuel for. 
They had to engage their thinking skills and decide why they were selling each fossil fuel for a certain amount, at the same time they took risks to see whether the smaller companies would pay their proposed price for their fossil fuel or whether the smaller companies would move on and buy elsewhere.


Very proud of their achievements, the Fiery Foxes understood that with each fossil fuel becoming scarce, the higher the price would be for that fossil fuel. They also understood that some fossil fuels were more difficult to get to and upped the prices for those fossil fuels. 
Finally, they understood the desperation their companies underwent to supply the demand of the smaller companies, that any conservation and thought of sustainability went out the window. 
So, `How many years do you think we have left of fossil fuels?`
Their attention was drawn back to the board displaying their answers.
The Grade 3s discovered, at the rate of our global consumption, fossil fuels will run out in this century. 
Absolute shock spread across all of their faces, `That`s in our lifetime!`. 
...
RENEWABLE ENERGY
CONSERVATION
SUSTAINABILTY