Nov 5
2019
October 28 – Binder Checks completed in class. Students worked on Assignment #26 Science World Magazine independently: For all articles on pages 3-7, students did hashtag summaries. For the articles starting on page 12 and 15, students wrote 5 sentence summaries.
October 29-30 and November 1 – Assignment #25 Fork and Beans: Students carried out labs to test different traits (fork beaks or spoon beaks) on their ability to pick up food (marshmallows or hard beans). Only certain “birds” can eat enough to survive and successful birds pass on their traits to their offspring. The surviving birds then influence what types of birds are in the next round (forks or spoons). Students worked on their lab independently on Friday including completing a stacked bar graph on their lab write-up which is due Wednesday, November 6. ****** 6th hour has not completed their lab write-up due to festivities planned this week. We will get caught up during the week of Nov. 4-8.
October 31 – Happy Halloween! Unfortunately, this day we had a super spooky quiz on Lesson 2 materials. Check Quarter 2 grades after November 8 to see student scores on the quiz after I have had a chance to grade them.
Nov 5
2019
October 21: Assignment #22: How Invade Kills Bed Bugs assignment & CER
October 22: Given Gotta Have It Checklist and Unit Summaries (see previous post). Assignment #23 – Bubble Map Answers: students select 3 questions from any of our group bubble maps posted in the room and answer them.
October 23-24: Assignment #20 – Close and Critical Reading In addition to the earlier work done on assignment #20 (roadblocks, text features) students annotated to include box and summarize and connections. Then, we completed all four boxes of a CCR Framework on the back of the page.
– Box 1: What does the author say? (Summary)
– Box 2: How does the author say it? (Author’s Craft / Discuss Text Features)
– Box 3: What does the author mean? (P.I.E. / Author’s Purpose)
– Box 4: What does the writing mean to me? (Text to Self connections, or Text to Text / Text to World)
October 25: Assignment #24 – Lab Kerfluffle: Students read about the Labrador Retrievers and complete a CER following prompts. The assignment stays in students’ binders.
Oct 22
2019
Today I passed out a study guide / unit organizer resource for your Resources tab in your binder. It consisted of these resources:
Oct 22
2019
We used this worksheet in class and it was a guided activity. Students were responsible for answering the questions and completing the CER asked for in #3 and #4 on the back of the worksheet.
Oct 18
2019
Students completed Frayer models for the four vocabulary words for Lessons 1 and 2: traits, gene, protein, mutation.
Oct 18
2019
Students started on their lab. It took several class days to complete.
Phase 1: Telephone Genes. Students used the game “telephone” to simulate the action of passing genetic code from generation to generation. The six letter code passed from student to student and gained mutations as it passed down the line just like a genetic code gains mutations as it passes from generation to generation.
Phase 2: Whatever code the student got during the telephone simulation was used as a set of direction to build a chain that simulates or models a protein. Genes are what living things use as directions to create proteins in all of the body’s cells, so we used our gene code to create our model.
Phase 3: We needed to see how well the protein met the constraints and criteria of the lab.
- Constraint: The protein must get stuck in the cell membrane. (We passed our proteins through the cell membrane. Only students whose protein got caught and would not fall through could continue with taking measurements in the lab.)
- Criteria: After a chain gets stuck in the membrane, the longer the chain that made it through, the smoother the skin the protein makes up. Longer chains are better. (We measured the chains in cm.)
- Criteria: Protein chains must be strong enough to be durable skin. Stronger chains are better. (We used a spring scale to measure the strength of the chain until it slipped or broke from the force.)
Phase 4: Analyze the results. Students compare data and describe how their models represent a gene / protein.
Oct 18
2019
Students received a Genetics article to annotate. They were asked to complete 3 “roadblocks” or sections of the text they do not understand.
10/18/19 We added another set of annotations to our article. Students were asked to identify the text features.
Oct 14
2019
Students viewed the Whiz Bang advertisement and answered questions on paper (see slides) and through group discussion.
We also discussed norms / expectations and previewed tomorrow’s mini-labs.
Oct 14
2019
Hello! It’s been a little while since I’ve updated you all on what is going on in class. I’m sorry for that! I got a little behind. 😉
October 3rd – Patterns Quiz & Assignment #16 – Crossword Puzzle
October 4th – Unit 1 Pretest & 2 Science World magazine article summaries
October 7th – Science World Magazine articles with the substitute teacher. (No assignment number)
October 8th – Start Lesson 1 / Assignment #17 – Bed Bug Information (slides above)… got through the first video in all classes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObVqT9daRuc
October 9th – Continue Lesson 2… got through the second video & discussed the experiment on the slides. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mSrXodXZhA Turned in Assignment #17.
October 10th – Read the Unit Challenge Summary. Brainstorm questions that can help us solve the unit challenge for our Class Bubble Map.
October 11th – (1/2 day) Copy Class Bubble Map as Assignment #18 and place into your binder.
Oct 2
2019
My apologies; I should have uploaded this on the day we worked on it in class. We had our PBIS Recess and being outside caused me to forget! Students graphed temperature and daylight hours for Orlando, Florida to explore patterns in data. The slideshow is useful for the questions on their worksheet.