Greetings Hornets!
This week was a fun week for students and staff members with spirit week and the 7th grade field trip Friday! Big thanks to all the teachers and parent volunteers for chaperoning the field trip. We could have not done it without all the extra hands and help; very much appreciated.
Monday we wrapped up our properties of matter lab. Students worked with table partners as well as myself on the questions regarding what they observed in the lab. We spent time in class this week talking about and defining the properties: Solubility, Cohesion, Surface Tension, Density, and Capillary Action. We talked about what we saw and what it meant for us. Then together as a class we constructed our own definitions for these properties. Students were also shown demonstration videos that helped explain what is happening at a molecular level during each of these properties.
Tuesday we did a balloon demonstration. The focus investigation question was “If we don’t see the gas particles, how do we know that they are there?”. Students often have the misconception of if they cannot see gas particles then they are not there, it does not exist, and air does not have weight. We addressed those misconceptions by recording the weight of a deflated balloon. Then we blew air into the balloon and recorded its weight after 10 pumps of air. Students were able to observe how the weight increased after filling a balloon up with air. Then we calculated the weight of JUST the air and students were able to see that gas particles do exist, they do have weight, even though we cannot see them with a naked eye. I found that this demonstration was really helpful to many students with the wrong misconception. Students also had really interesting reasons as to why they believed what they did. This was a successful and fun activity for them!
Wednesday-Thursday students worked on pages 8a and 8b of their interactive science notebook (ISN). Students were to create a foldable of the properties of matter with definitions (copied from their lab notes on pg. 7b of ISN) using complete sentences as well as a visual representation. One flap was used for the definition and the other flap was used for their picture. Seeing what students came up with for their picture was amazing and creative because every student had their own creative way showing the same word. Thursday we finished up the words by completing a cloze which were a paragraphs incorporating all of the vocabulary words so far. Students had to read the paragraphs and use their context clues to fill in the blanks using the vocabulary words from the word bank at the top of their paper. Students were given all day Wednesday and Thursday to complete this. Anything that is not completed of 8a and 8b is due on Monday next week when we return.
Friday-7th grade Field Trip to Greenfield Village all day 9:30am-2:00pm.
