Sunday, November 25, 2012

Science Class DoJo

I am excited to share our new Science Star award, Class DoJo. It is a positive behavior program where each child is given an avatar that represents them during Science time. I can give positive and negative points for class noise level, participation, and even on task behaviors. By the end of the class our goal is to have 75% of the class at obtaining positive behavior points. For each 75%-94% the class will be awarded one Science Star. If the class has over 95% of the class getting positive points the class will earn 2 Science Stars. The goal is to get to 10 points for a fun Science reward such as an extra cool experiment or special activities. I can't wait to start it this week with our new units.

Poppin' Good Time In Science

For Science this week, we had only two days. I decided to use cranberries and popcorn to tie in Social Studies, Reading, and Writing with Science experiments. Here are some fun activities we tried...

Bouncing Berries For The
Freshness Test!

Fun with floating berries...


Using our 5 senses...


Happy Thanksgiving My Science Stars

Hope everyone enjoyed their time off. It is new unit time for many of my classes. First graders are starting a new unit on rocks this week. Hopefully, my first grade friends found rocks before the snow fell this week. Bring your treasures in this week.

Second graders are going to be starting their new unit this week as well. We are moving into Solids, Liquids, and Gases. How exciting! As a MATTER of fact is will be GREAT!

Third graders are also starting their Water unit. We will be focusing on the water cycle and other concepts of this wonderful liquid.

Fourth graders are just finishing up their magnet and electricity unit. We will be creating electromagnets after our quiz. Hope everyone studied. Next week, we will start our human body unit. No bone about it, we will learn about what makes us jump, sit, bend and more.

Fifth graders are finishing up their Variables unit and will be focusing on the Flipper Olympics. We will then start our Mixtures and Solutions unit. Yea, for Chemistry!

Thursday, November 15, 2012

4th Grade Quiz After Thanksgiving

Electricity Study Guide:

•Know the difference between a series and parallel circuit

Parallel circuits=a circuit with two or more pathways for current to flow

Series circuits= only one path for a current to flow

•Know the components of a closed circuit

Source= D-cell, energy provider

Receiver= light bulb or motor, what gets the energy to work

Pathway= wires that connect the source and the receiver


Wednesday, November 14, 2012

First Grade Thinkers

One of my wonderful first grade coworkers decided to teach her students how to take notes and share what they learned in Science. This week, they will be taking a test. They were so excited about teaching their teacher about animals that I needed to come down to their room to answer questions. How exciting! Thanks, Janet!

Flipper Olympics

We are creating games to finish up our variable unit. Each game is a different Olympic event. Next week, the fifth graders will be challenged to show distance, height, and accuracy using the variables we tested. Here are some of the games we are going to be plaing next week...




Sunday, November 11, 2012

New Units Coming Your Way

Next week, we will be finishing many of the FOSS units that we started at the beginning of the year. First graders, we are starting our Pebbles, Sand, and Silt Unit next week. Don't forget to find some rocks before it snows! You can bring them to school to share. An egg carton is a great way to story them!

2nd graders are you ready for our Water Unit? What a great connection after we finish our Air and Weather Unit next week. Remember, we have a test this week. Study...study...study.

3rd graders will be working on Solids and Liquids. What's the matter you might ask? We will be starting that Unit in two weeks. We are finishing our rock unit this week by finding out what is in granite. Rock on, 3rd graders!

4th graders are finishing their unit on Magnetism and Electricity in two weeks. We are creating series and parallel circuits this week and wrapping up our unit with a final test right before Thanksgiving break. Our next unit is the Human Body...no bones about it we will learn how we are put together.

5th graders will be ending our Variable Unit right before break as well. We are creating Olympic games to go along with our flipper experiments. We will be testing height and distance with a variety of events to test our variable skills. We will also be ending our unit with a test before we eat some turkey.


Thursday, November 1, 2012

First Quarter In Review

Wow, the first quarter is already come and gone. Many of our units are finishing up. So.... let's review what everyone has been learning in Science this quarter.

First grade- Animals, animals, animals. We have compared and contrasted different types of animals each week. We focused on mammals, amphibians, reptiles, and birds. We have used our writing skills and art smarts to connect the facts with fun activities. We have sung songs, and taken tests to remember each group of animals. First graders should remember which group is warm or cold blooded, which groups gives live birth or lays eggs, and what characteristics make each animal group unique. Our next unit will be pebbles, sand, and silt.

Second grade- Air and weather was our quarter one focus. Students should know that air is all around us, it takes up space, it comes in different forms (solid, liquid, gas), and that it moves things. We also focused on the weather making connections with the weather in our country, our state, our town. Students have used many tools to measure weather... from thermometers to anemometers. We will continue to study storms and the sky in the day and night.

Third grade- We have learned about Earth materials. We have used property words to describe the three types of rocks: metamorphic, sedimentary, and igneous. We observed the different rocks and have learned that minerals are found in rocks. We have tested minerals to see how hard they are. We used a paper clip, a penny, and our finger nail. We placed it on Moh's hardness scale. We tested to see if Calcite is present in rocks by using the vinegar test. We are finishing up by observing crystals from calcite present in our rocks. We will also be testing granite to see what minerals are present in that rock. We will take nothing for granite...

Fourth grade- Our fourth graders started off by learning about magnets. We tested magnetism, build temporary magnets, found which objects are used to find magnetic objects and hunted down objects that were and weren't magnetic. We transferred that information to our electricity unit. We found that objects are conductors and insulators. We created circuits and know that three components are the receiver, the source, and the pathway. We built circuits to test how to create a pathway. We will continue to build parallel and series circuits and test mystery objects to connect what we know.

Fifth grade- We are becoming pretty good scientists with this unit...variables. We have set up three experiments the pendulum, the life boat, and the flipper. We used our schema to make connections between real world experiences and the experiments that we test. We made relationships between what we learned and what we did to create a controlled experiment...only changing one thing in our experiment which is our variable. Everything else must stay the same. Now, we will see if what they know can transfer to other ideas.