Vocabulary quiz tomorrow.

Students need to review vocabulary on p. 2-7 in their notebooks.

Homework

Students should respond to the Teaching Point for the last couple of days: What are tectonic plates and how do they interact with one another? They can simply write out what they understand, draw pictures, create a poem or use rhyming to help them remember.

Plate Tectonics

The past two days we have used the Dynamic Earth website (http://www.learner.org/interactives/dynamicearth/index.html) to guide us.  The fill-in notes we took all came directly from this site, including color coding some of the boundaries on our map by type: convergent boundary, divergent boundary, or transform boundary.

In addition, we will be having a quiz over the vocabulary on p. 2-7 of the notebooks.  I haven't quite finalized which day it will be, but it is coming.  Students should review each night.



http://www.youtube.com/user/barcroftscience?feature=mhee

Today we began our discussion about Pangaea and tectonic plates.  Students were given a copy of the modified brace map below and are to complete it to help them study for their quiz tomorrow. It should be attached to page 8 when they have completed it. The quiz covers ONLY material about layers of the earth on pages 8,9, and 9A.  9B will be where we put our quiz when it is returned.

Layers of the Earth

After this week's work, students should be able to fill in the following tree map.

And there will be a quiz on Tuesday. 

What a week!

It has been a busy week for science!  On Monday, we started a new unit about "What's inside the Earth?" We began by using 6 pages to identify and illustrate some key vocabulary terms: inner core, outer core, mantle, composition, crust, plate tectonics,convergent boundary, divergent boundary, transform boundary, fault, crustal plates, and ocean basin.  Students finished that up on Tuesday in class.  If they did not, they were to complete it for homework.

Wednesday we did a difficult group activity to identify the layers of the earth and create a scale model with cubes.  Overall, the students worked hard at it.

Thursday, of course, was the agricultural field trip.  Many students got to milk a cow, try muscadine grapes, and learn about some interesting plants.  At the end of the day, the students wrote letters to show their gratitude for the experience.

Tomorrow we will pick up with our study of the layers of the earth.  Tomorrow and next week, we will be using this website http://www.learner.org/interactives/dynamicearth/index.html as a class to learn more about the layers of Earth.

Lab Conclusions

Today we finished writing our conclusions in class.  Some students have been absent or felt rushed to keep up they asked that I put what we did on the blog.  The portions written in blue color may need to be modified based on the student's lab results.

Conclusion

         The distance the rubber band is stretched affects the distance it flies when it is launched.  When we stretched the rubber band 9cm, it went an average of _____ cm.  As we stretched the rubber band further, the average increased until we got to a ______cm average at a 13 cm stretch.  Therefore, stretching the rubber band further makes it launch further.

        The data did support my prediction because I thought the rubber band would fly further the more it was stretched. (Some students may need to change this statement based on the prediction they made, however this should apply to most students).  Some of my data was inconsistent because...student discusses unusually high or low numbers s/he got for example (a rubber band at ______cm stretch rolled to (a very large number)cm and caused the average to be off.)

        I wonder if ...student writes questions that came up during the experiment. For example, "I wonder if our results would change if we used a thicker rubber band."

Welcome to Science Class!!!

Here is a brief rundown of last week:

Monday

• basic rules of the classroom, procedures, and grading information

Tuesday & Wednesday--Teaching Point: How do interactive notebooks help us in science class? (p. 4)

• We discussed the interactive notebooks we will be using for the year in science class (handout on p.5)
• We learned how we use the left and right sides of the book differently--right side is for teacher input (notes, readings, discussions) and the left side is for students to synthesize what they have learned that day.  
• Homework in the note book will be frequent 2-4 times per week and will be checked 2-3 times per week.
• We created an acrostic poem as a class to help us understand what should go on the right side of their notebook, using the words "RIGHT SIDE"
• HOMEWORK students should create an acrostic poem of their own using the words "LEFT SIDE" to help them remember what activities can be used to synthesize the day's lesson.

Thursday--TP: How do scientists learn about the world around them? (p.6)

• We watched a short video of a young surfer who uses science to catch the perfect wave.
• We discussed the steps our young scientist took to find the answer to his quest.
• We created a foldable that listed and described the steps of the scientific method (to put on p. 7 in their notebooks).
• Homework was for students choice to create a mnemonic device or a bubble map to help them remember the steps of the scientific method. Should be completed on p. 6 of the notebook and is due Tuesday.

Friday

• We learned a warm up we will be doing every Thursday.  It is from a book titled "Skills Workshop: Reading in the Content Area".  
• This will be used as a diagnostic tool for both ELA and Science to help students become aware of what reading skills they need to work on. 
• The remainder of the period was used for students to finish putting science notebooks together.
• In some classes, we watched a short movie on the Scientific Method.