Just a reminder that tomorrow is the last day that any changes can be made to quarter grades.
I will be pulling students during class to make up quizzes or assignments as needed, and I will also be staying after school for students who want to retake any assessment except for their Natural Selection quiz we took today. (With the exception of absent students, that quiz grade is final.)
So far I will say that I graded today’s quiz and scores are available on Student Connect. I am taking a break from my grading pile to write this and I’m not sure how long it will take me to enter the rest of the items I am grading — the lab and two classwork assignments. Have students check Student Connect in the morning to see what their report card grade will look like if they do not change anything tomorrow.
It’s been a great few months! I am happy to see how much everyone has grown in such a short time and I’m excited to see what the summer does for everyone! Please check back to see pictures of our class butterfly and find out if it was a boy or a girl! That should be within about 2 weeks from now depending on nature… 😉
Today we worked on an in-class lab where we collected data on Peppered Moths. This will count as a small lab grade (summative). If you were absent and would like to complete the lab so that you can improve your summative score, use the following website and data sheet to complete the simulation yourself. This must be submitted by Thursday at the end of the day.
So, when I find caterpillar eggs on milkweed plants “in the wild,” what I do is clip the leaf away from the stem towards the bottom so that I can stick the stems through holes in a condiment cup lid or some other type of plastic container. Then, once the eggs start to hatch I LEAVE IT ALONE! You all saw how small the caterpillars are after they hatch. If I mess with the plants when there are small caterpillars on them, it’s more likely that I will accidentally squish somebody or throw them out with old plant leafs. Instead, I waited about a week before I even touched them at all!
I took out the container and one by one, I removed the leaves from their holes in the container. (I know it’s hard to see in this picture… but the container is about the size of a cheeseburger and it has about 20 or 30 holes drilled in the lid for me to stick stems in. I searched each leaf for a caterpillar and counted how many hatched and lived the fist week. Then, I threw away any leaves that were too crunchy, too hole-y, or otherwise going bad. I added about 5 new leafs in between the older ones and over time, the caterpillars will most likely wander onto the newest leaves naturally just like we all would rather eat fresh food than week old food!
Out of 21 eggs I found, 18 made it this far.. plus the one I have been bringing to school that was already a caterpillar when I found him. From this point on, most of the caterpillars will live and become butterflies. There are still some things that can happen… they could fight, or they could wander away from the food and not know how to get back. I try to help them but sometimes it’s just too late. I’ve only ever had 1 large caterpillar die mysteriously. It’s possible he had parasites or something that kept him from becoming full size and forming a chrysalis. Who knows… nature is cruel sometimes. And as for chrysalis, I’ve only ever had one not make it. The silk the caterpillar spun to attach to the ceiling of container was not strong enough and when I was moving the lid to take out frass (science word for poop!) and add food, it fell off of the silk and the impact on the floor cracked the chrysalis open. I was sad! But that means in a few weeks I should have about 19 beautiful butterflies to release and I can’t wait to show you all on here!
Speaking of “our” caterpillar… I decided on the name suggested by my 2nd hour students. “He” will be Louis Vuitton… and if “he” ends up being a female, Louise Vuitton! (I won’t know for sure until the butterfly emerges from its chrysalis.)
Louis Vuitton is now 19mm long!!!! And about 3-4 mm wide. What a chunker!
I will change his leaf out today, too… but I wanted to show you a picture of him on his original leaf so you could compare the size and how much he has eaten first!
The 7th graders are learning about Plate Tectonics right now, which is our explanation for how the continents moved around the surface of the Earth over time. This relates a lot to Geologic Time which we have been talking about for a few weeks! I mentioned a lot about the conditions on Earth in each time period but I found this video that really gives a great representation for you to check out.
It, like the Earth, starts in PreCambrian time. You can see that most of the Earth is water / oceans at this point.
Slowly land masses start to form. Some disappear, some stay.
By 2 billion years ago (25 sec into the video), some of our current continents have started to form…
At first, all you see right is their cratons — the parts of the continent that have been around the longest.
As the colorful pieces of land start to combine (at convergent boundaries of their original tectonic plates), the cratons start to build up the large continents we have today.
Divergent boundaries between land masses move them apart from each other.
Students worked in class for 2 days on their Geologic Time project. They chose 1 era of geologic time (precambrian, paleozoic, mesozoic, or cenozoic) and followed their research guide (Harrison Geologic-time-Mini-Project) to make a poster or a Google Slides file on that Era. We had access to Chromebooks both days but all of the groups are at different levels of completion today. (Some are finished, some have barely started if they were off task both days!)
The project needs to be completely finished coming back from the long weekend. They may need access to a computer to use Google Slides because it is difficult to create slides on a phone app. Please work with your child to ensure the grade is complete. It counts as a summative grade and it will not be acceptable to not complete it! Students who do not turn in their project before class on Tuesday will be ZAPPED daily until it is submitted (same as we are doing for the last project on the Electromagnetic Spectrum).
Please submit projects to my email harrisr1@dearbornschools.org
All projects submitted online via Google Docs or by E-mail have been graded. You should check your first slide for a comment that contains your grade (if Google Slides), or if you e-mailed it to me outside of Google Slides, look for an e-mail response.
I will post grades after I grade paper copies.
If you do not have a reply or a comment, I might have missed yours… send it to me again!
