Bean Project Write Up/ Plans for the Week of October 3

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Here is this week's plan. Along with today's lesson. Take a look at what you will be doing this week. I would love feedback from you. If you see something I should add or change you can leave a comment on the post or even leave a comment on actual plan. If you leave a comment, leave your first name so that we can discuss it later :) Here is the link to this weeks lesson plans.

Today you will finish writing up your lab posts from the Bean Project. You will need to make sure you address all of these parts:

1. Problem
2. Background Knowledge
3. Hypothesis
4. Materials 
5. Method
6. Experiment
7. Collect Data
8. Conclusion
9. Questions for Extensions

As usual make sure your conventions are good.  After you have finished, let me look at them before you publish so I can approve them.

Terrifict Tiger Assembly, September 2011

These are random scences from today's Terrific Tiger Assembly

Miss Reta Lott This Is America Respect

What Are You Learning?: Plate Tectonics

More videos showing what students are learning and doing in science class. This time students are working on lessons they will be teaching to the rest of the class.

Students Can Facilitate Their Own Learning

Lakin decided to create a paper model for her Explorers PowerPoint. She sketched the idea for each slide on paper so that she could organize it and tweak it before she created her presentation. Because she had already organized her pages and received the feedback she needed she managed to put her presentation together in just a few minutes. Instead of spending time on the computer making decisions about what information to include and how she should organize it, she focused on finding great pictures to emphasize her points (to the point of not even needing text on some slides!)

Don't Make Your Presentation a Killer!

Here is a slideshare presentation we will use in class to help my students understand how and why they should make good design choices when using any presentation software.

Death by PowerPoint

View more presentations from Alexei Kapterev. (tags: tips powerpoint)

What Did You Learn?: Non-Ivory Soap Boats

Here are a couple videos from students that watched their soap boats. Some of the boats sunk and some of them floated. Here is their reaction.

 

What Are You Learning?: Explorer Projects

Students are researching explorers of North America. They have to create a PowerPoint presentation as required by the Missouri Assessment Program. Here are a couple students explaining what they are learning and what they are doing.

Picture of Captain Cook from Wikipedia.com

Here are the links for your explorers assignment. Read the directions very, very carefully and follow them. The links are also found on the right of the blog below the green bar. Make sure you cite your sources! You will upload it to Google Documents when you are finished.

Instructions for the Explorer Project
Links for the Explorer Project

Use EasyBib to cite your sources appropriately. 

Our Students are Artstounding!

Francisco and Jessie drew an amazing picture of a mustang, our district's mascot. Today is football homecoming and they are showing their school pride. Check out the video where they explain what they did and what they learned.

Noel's Library of Electronic Books

Mrs. Owens showed the teachers yesterday how we can access the online electronic books (ebooks) that we have available. Here is how you can access them too. On the left of the class blog under Class Links you will find a new link titled Our Library Electronic Books. If you click the link it will take you to this screen.

For your user name type in: S (for student) and your lunch number. For example: S1234
For your password type in your whole last name in lower case letters.

If you logged in correctly you should see this screen.

After you have logged in, see what kinds of books you have that are available to read. Do you see any you can read that will help you with the things you will be studying this year? (I did notice a book on Christopher Columbus!) After you have spent some time browsing, I want you to write a blog post answering the following questions:

1. Can you use this library outside of school? Explain
2. Is using this site legal in regards to copyright? Why or Why not?
3. Identify 2-3 books you might want to read. What makes them something you want to read?

Soap Boat Float

The students are working on creating soap "boats" that will float. We are experimenting with shape and density to try to understand why some things float and some sink. Since we cannot easily measure the density of the soap bars, students are using measurements of mass as well as boat design to see if they can create a boat that floats from a bar of soap that ordinarily sinks.

Below are a few videos I took asking the questions: What are you doing? What are you learning?

Here is some footage of the students working on their boats.

Aluminum Boat Float: What Did You Learn?

Here we have three videos of students relating what they are doing/learning with a hands-on lab activity in science. The assignment was for them to design an aluminum boat that would be able to hold as many marbles as possible. You may note that one student talks about surface tension. The students had been introduced to this concept in an earlier lab. Although the application was wrong here, it is still good to see them reach back into what they have been learning.

This activity took place before we introduced the concepts of buoyant force and density. Now they have some experiences we can relate to when we do get discuss them.

7th Grade Art Work

Here are some of the projects our 7th grade have created this year.

Create A Graph: Graphic Data Representation

Create a Graph is a wonderful tool for creating graphs. You can use the program to create bar, line, pie, and other types of graphs and you can print them or save them as a pdf or jpeg.

Today you will use the data you collected to create a line graph for your plants and a a bar graph for your aluminum boat (7th grade only). You will print the graphs and save them as a .jpg and upload the picture to your blog.

Here is how to set up your bar graph.

 Download and Print from this tab.

You only have today to get this project completed so you had better get busy!

Pumped Up Kicks!

Did you know you can design your own Converse shoes? Not only that, you can also buy them after you make them just the way you like them! Go to the Create Your Own Custom Converse site and make the best pair of kicks you can. After you have finished, capture the picture by pushing the shift and Prt Scr (print screen) buttons. Then go into Paint and paste the image. Save it as a .jpg and print it out. Can you make the best looking kicks in junior high?

Christmas Keepsake Ornaments

The MCHS Junior class is now offering two Christmas ornaments for sale. For only $5.00 you can add one of these keepsake ornaments to your Christmas decorations.

Ornaments will be available for sale at home games. If you are not able to attend, contact Mr. C and he will get you into contact with the right people.

What Is Copyright? How Do You Want to License Your Blog?

 

Today we are going to begin looking at a really complex issue. If you remember a few days ago you filled out a survey for me where you had to give your opinion about some specific copyright issues. Hopefully your questions will be answered after you do some research.  Here is the link to the answers to the survey if you would like to review them. Here is a link to the original post.

Any question that asks what copyright is needs to have an answer, and what better place to get that answer from than Wikipedia. Here is the link to the Wikipedia page on copyright. Check it out and make sure you can give me a good definition of what it means.

Our next step is to check out CreativeCommons.org, an organization dedicated to creating different types of copyright licenses. While here you will need to:

1. Identify the six different licenses you can get from CreativeCommons.org.
2. Understand what each of the licenses will allow others to do with the content you create.
3. Choose which Creative Commons license you want to put on your blog (or you may choose to keep the original copyright.)
4. Write a blog post to explain why you chose that particular license.
5. Add the license you chose to your blog as a widget. 

You may want to read the first paragraph on the About page at CreativeCommons.org to get a sense of why many people think it is so valuable. 

You may also want to talk to others about the different licenses. Push each other to explain why you are choosing a particular license. Push me to explain why I chose the license I did for our class blog .

Today we are going to use Scribble Maps to identify and print landforms for social studies class. After you have located your land form, you will need to save the picture as a .jpg file to your desktop. Then use the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to print. (Right click on the saved file and choose it from the Open With menu.)


After you print your map, embed the map on your blog. You will have to get the embed code and paste into a new post after you click the html tab at the top of where you type on your post.

Cross Country Pictures

Here are some pictures from the September 3 cross country meet in Neosho. The boys and girls junior high teams both won!

5th Grade Water Cycle Song

Copyright Survey

Here is the link to the answers given by the students.

Electrolysis Using a Copper Chloride Solution

Today students conducted a lab where they observed a chemical change take place. As you can see in this video, there were a lot of bubbles created (which is a sign of a chemical change taking place.) The metal also changed in appearance as well.

Noel Elementary on Vimeo.

Here is Kayla explaining what she observed.

Noel Elementary on Vimeo.

Science Experiment Methodology

Today you are going to post your science methodology. I want you to put the original and the revised versions of your step by step process and then explain why you had to revise it. For example:

Original Methodology

1. Gather materials
2. Put beans in the cup
3. put dirt in the cup
4. etc.

Revised Methodology

1. Gather materials
2. Find two beans that are the same color and texture.
3. Check the mass with the digital scale to make sure both beans have similar mass.
4. etc.

Reflection

I had to change my methodology because I forgot to write how I was going to need to check the characteristics of the beans so that they could be as similar as possible.....