Etch 'n Sketch Reflections

You know, it's one thing to try and teach large groups of children on a normal day. It's a totally different beast to try and teach large groups of children on Halloween (especially when there is trick-or-treating that will be happening after school). But to teach large groups of children on Halloween AND have it snowing all day?!? I was prepared for some craziness today. To be honest, though, the craziness wasn't fully there. Sure, there was definitely a buzz of excitement throughout the day, and at times the students struggled with maintaining composure, but it was better than I expected. Now we will just have to see how things go tomorrow following the aftermath of sugar-highs... The week as a whole went pretty well. On Monday we headed into the lab to check on our ecocolumns and an acid rain simulation we set up at the end of last week. The ecocolumns, for the most part, have been holding steady these last few weeks. I'm pretty sure that all of the crickets in the ...

What a week! It was a week full of a variety of different activities, with some extra excitement today! Our main task for science was the presentations about pollution that the students were working on last week. My initial plan was for the students to begin presenting on Monday. I had left instructions for the students to share any digital parts of the presentations with me when they were finished (this would allow me to see how their progress was coming along even though I wasn't there last Friday). There were around 25 groups between the 3 classes, but I had only received work from about one-third of the groups--this told me right away that I would need to plan a little more work time into the schedule for Monday. However, that allowed me to tighten up the expectations for worktime on Monday for those groups that hadn't finished. About 90% of the groups were done and ready to present on Tuesday. We had some very nice presentations. Most of the groups chose the typical Goog...

The science classroom has been a buzz of activity this week! With our ecocolumns together, we began to discuss how ecosystems can affect one another (natural disasters that start in one area and spread to another) and then built towards how people often have an effect on ecosystems through pollution. We talked about how pollution that happens in one area can spread to another area. So, if we were to pollute the terrarium (on the top of the ecocolumn), that pollution could be transferred to the aquarium at the bottom when it rains (when we water the terrarium). This led us to some real-world examples and our first research project. I introduced 3 types of pollution that are spread through the water cycle: acid rain, fertilizer runoff, and road salt pollution. The students formed teams and chose one of the pollutions to learn more about from a variety of resources. Next, the students chose a presentation method for how they will share what they've learned with the class. I gave them ...

Have you ever had one of those weeks where it was Friday before you knew it? This was not one of those weeks. Not that I'm saying this was a bad week--on the contrary, I felt like this was a good week. However, for some reason, it was just one of those weeks that seemed to move as slow as molasses. One of those weeks where it's hard to remember what you did on Monday without looking at your lesson plans (I needed to...). Speaking of Monday, that was the big day for combining our terrariums and aquariums into the final ecocolumns. I am happy to report that we had a successful week of no spills or messes--that's a victory in my book! However, we did have some sadness this week, as we had many ecocolumns that suffered the loss of crickets. I think there were some of them that just couldn't handle the trip they had to take from wherever it is they are shipped from. All in all, the students who lost crickets are seeming to take it in stride. Another main aspect of the week...

WOW! Who knew that some bugs at school could cause so much excitement?!? Today was the big day for the students to put the finishing touches on their terrariums, and that meant adding our critters to their new homes. We spent the last couple of days learning about our new visitors so that we could understand how they would fit into our ecosystems. We learned some pretty interesting facts; for example, I didn't realize that isopods (in our case, pillbugs) were mainly aquatic creatures. They are more closely related to lobsters and shrimp than to insects. They even breathe through an organ that is similar to gills (another important reason why we need to keep the terrariums well-watered)! Going into this week, I don't think the students thought they would learn much information about the crickets that they didn't already know. However, we learned a great deal about their anatomy, including the fact that the females have a body part called an ovipositor that is used to lay egg...