Hello Mrs. Gravley's homeroom and goodbye Ms. Welte's homeroom!
Today was our first day of our next science unit. Ms. Welte's homeroom has stopped in the middle of unit 4 (all about waves) and will pick up again around the end of January. Mrs. Gravley's homeroom started the second unit of science today which is all about energy! It's a fun unit where we investigate the relationship between speed and energy and how energy is transferred by heat, light and electric currents. We will hopefully start the waves unit as well but we'll see. Students should get used to studying the stop and jots from every lesson to prepare for the end of lesson quizzes. They will be graded on the stop and jots as well as investigation participation (of course, they are excused if they are absent that day) and quizzes. Since all the materials are turned in to be graded, there shouldn't be any materials in their science section of their binder at the end of the lesson (after the quiz).
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We are wrapping up our second unit in science about energy. We had a blast this past week working with 9V batteries, lights, chimes and motors to create circuits. An extra credit opportunity went home today in the Thursday folders related to this experiment. Students have until our last day of science, December 13th, to complete this extra credit opportunity. The students may either create the circuit with the materials we have at Highline on their own time (before school, after school or during recess) or they may create it online using the PHET Circuit Simulation (link found on the right). If using the PHET Circuit Simulation, students should use 3 light bulbs since the simulation doesn't have a buzzer or chime.
Speaking of extra credit... Extra credit can be available in science if a student does something or experiences something that is related to our fourth grade next generation science standards and writes about it. You'll find the standards in a powerpoint from the link below: http://science-class.net/NGSS/I_can_statements/ELEM/4/Grade4-scienceframe.pdf We have begun a new unit in science to learn all about energy. We have learned so far that energy is the ability to make an object move or make change. We learned that when two objects collide, energy can transfer from one object to another but is never created nor destroyed. The energy an object has depends on it's weight and speed. We built ramps and explored this idea this week. We have just recently learned how energy is transferred by light, sound and heat. We made observations and discussed how this was possible. Our next lesson will teach us how energy is transferred by electric currents. This topic has proven to be more fun than I thought it would. I'm excited for the students to get to learn about this.
Throughout this year, please discuss the topics your student is learning in science with them to help them prepare for the science fair in the spring. They will need to choose a topic or idea to research or investigate and it would be helpful if they already have a favorite topic beforehand. I'm sad to see Mrs. Gravley's homeroom leave me until December 14th but am excited about all the things we learned about plant and animal structures that function to support growth, reproduction, survival and behavior. We had a blast learning about pill bugs, which were actually sow bugs because they didn't ever roll into a ball but instead played dead. Today we finished our unit by beginning a flip book that Ms. Welte's class will finish. The flip book will be proudly displayed outside on the bulletin board and the goal was to begin to prepare students for the science fair projects they can do in the spring. If you have a chance, come check out our flip books! Our next unit of science will actually cover two units in our curriculum - energy and waves and information.
Students have learned all about plant's internal and external structures that allow for growth, reproduction, support and their behaviors as well. We are now moving away from plants and looking at animals instead. We will be studying how animals have internal and external structures to support their growth, reproduction, support and their behaviors.
As you may have heard already, students have been observing pill bugs since they started science but now we will use that information and those observations to create a presentation similar to that expected to see at the science fair in the second semester. Throughout science class, we discuss different questions or topics we may want to research for our science fair project. The science fair is not mandatory but it is available as extra credit. Students may need to start projects early. For example, we have been observing pill bugs for at least two months now so if a student were to copy this idea, they would need ample amount of time to do so. Hello there!
We have been hard at work already learning about the structures plants have in place to support growth as well as the structures they have to provide protection. Students will take a quiz on structures for protection tomorrow and begin to learn about the structures plants have for reproduction. We will be using live flowers tomorrow in class and although necessary precautions such as wiping the desk surfaces and washing our hands will happen, students may experience sensitivity to the plants. We are simultaneously experimenting to see how pill bugs change their environment. Some students have found their pill bugs are leaving white shell-like coverings in their environment or that the leaves provided for the pill bug's habitats are decomposing. It's been fun watching these critters and the pill bugs (just kidding) work together to investigate. Hello there!
This will be the first post that is important for anyone in Gravley's homeroom to read since Welte's homeroom is now in their first Social Studies unit - please see Mrs. Gravley's website for more information. During students first unit in science they will explore how plants and animals have internal and external structures to support growth, reproduction, survival, and behavior. Students will learn about plant structures from lessons 1-4 and then animal structures from lessons 5-9. Students will be graded on in-class participation through investigations and class notes as well as lesson quizzes and two larger assessments (one after lesson 4 and one after lesson 9). The in-class notes are grades on a four-point rubric. If students are absent or out of the classroom for an extended amount of time for any reason, it is their responsibility to inform me of that by writing "Out for ___" or "Absent" on any parts of the in-class notes they may have missed. I'm looking forward to working with Mrs. Gravley's homeroom class for the next approximately 25 instructional days. Please feel free to reach out with any questions, comments or concerns. You'll see in Illuminate I've posted grades on both the quizzes and the science notebooks. Science notebooks are graded as a participatory grade so if almost all or all of the packet is complete, students earn a 4/4 whereas if there is almost all but missing a few pieces, students earn a 3/4. Students quizzes are administered after the lesson.
Next Tuesday is our last day together which means our last day to observe and enjoy our pill bugs which we were using to try to answer the question, "How do pill bugs change their environment?" We will finish Lesson 9 tomorrow and take the Lesson 9 quiz. Wednesday will be our first day of Unit 1 in Social Studies for Welte's homeroom class. This week our focus is on the structures animals have to support their movement and reproduction. In terms of our pill bug investigation, we have been observing some of the pill bugs playing dead when we disturb their environment too much. We investigated with hand lenses to see how many legs they actually have and we've been observing their overall environment to see if they change their environment at all. We will end science on September 27th. After that, my homeroom class will have Mrs. Gravley for approximately 25 instructional days in Social Studies.
This week we are learning more about the structures animals use to support movement, reproduction and digestion. Tomorrow we will begin a super exciting investigation that I will avoid going into details about because I don't want to spoil it but I'll let you guess based on the picture below... :)
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