SNAPSHOT: 31 January 2013

Photo credit: MDS

 We could not resist the beautiful weather today. We took a "break" to enjoy the sun during class today.

Student Reflections: Solar Powered Cars

An integral part of the learning process that we often do not get to see is the reflection process. After an activity or lesson students are encouraged to take time to reflect on what happened, what they learned, and whether or not they thought it was worthwhile. In sixth grade, we have been working up to these types of reflections by doing them orally and giving each other feedback. 

Upon completing our study of solar-powered cars, the students were asked write a detailed reflection. They created them in Google docs and published them to the web. If you are interested in reading their reflections, you will find them listed with links below.  If you would like to read more about the solar-powered car project, you can find out more here.

SW       NW       KS       MDS      MHS       IR       MR       SO       CL      KK       KG       MG      TD      LC

Wacky Word of the Week: Finnimbrun

finnimbrun

noun (obsolete)
a trinket or knick knack

Climate Change Map: Temperature Change

As we watched the Inconvenient Truth last week, we saw several graphs that showed temperature change over time. I found this neat website that has taken that concept one step further. You can move the marker anywhere in the world, a city, an island, a portion of an ocean or sea, and it will graph the temperature change over at least the last 5 years, sometimes even more.

Climate Change: New Scientist

Pretty cool.

Thanks to RadioLab's Robert Krulwich for bringing this to my attention.

Wacky Word of the Week: Confuzzled

confuzzled

adjective
a combination of being confused and puzzled; clueless or unclear

Solar Cars by LC and MHS

   Solar Cars

    By LC and MHS

For the past months in science, we have been working on solar-powered cars. Firs,t we had to learn all about photovoltaics (solar energy) and electric circuits. We learned about energy and its connection to the sun and how electricity flows. After we mastered this concept, we decided to make solar-powered vehicles. We had to wait for the materials, but they came quickly. First, we had to separate all of our equipment. After that, we cut and measured balsa wood. It wasn’t that easy because all of our measurements had to be exact. Learning to use an Xacto knife was pretty tricky too. We spent a few days experimenting with gears. We discovered how they turned and how their sizes made differences in speed and torque. After we experimented with the gears, we had lots of gluing to do. We had to assemble our chassis (or car body) and axles. Once all of that was done, then came the gear/motor assembly. We got to choose our gear combinations that impacted the speed and power of the car. We glued on the motor and screwed on the gears. Then came the ambitious part. We had to solder alligator clips to battery packs and the solar panels. It was quite difficult to solder because we were dealing with 750 degrees tools. Thank you to Evan and Brett for helping us out with the soldering. Finally, completed the final steps which involved lots of glue. Protractors and rulers came out to make sure everything was perfect. We checked the angle that our solar panels were mounted to make sure it maximized the power.  We tested our cars and they worked! We had so much fun with this project!

Research Resource: Webpage date

I know I open have trouble finding the publishing date on a webpage when I need to cite it. Thanks to SO, here is a great tool for finding the publishing date.

Here is the link: http://www.ehow.com/how_7291002_date.html

Thanks SO for sharing this tool!

Flood Maps

Inspired by our conversation in class and viewing of "The Inconvenient Truth,"KK  researched this neat website. It allows you to manipulate changes in the sea level and it shows where the new water levels will be.

The link is here: FLOOD MAPS

NOTE: The sea level changes are in meters. To convert it to feet, you can estimate by multiplying the number of meters by 3.

Would your house be ok?

¿Ser o Estar?

Sixth grade students learned how to differentiate between the two verbs ser and estar. Both verbs mean, "to be." . Students were familiar with the present tense conjugations of the verbs, but not their uses. To practice the uses of the verbs, students wrote sentences while describing images. They were careful in selecting which verbs to use when describing different aspects of the images. Some of the questions they answered were, ¿dónde está?, ¿qué están haciendo?, ¿Cómo es?, ¿De dónde son?. These questions opened up the possibilities for them to be creative in their writing as well as using each verb correctly.

Below are some of the ways students learned to differentiate the verbs and their uses:

Ser                                                           Estar

physical description                               feelings
nationality                                             emotions
gender                                                   physical conditions
profession                                             location
possession                                             present progressive tense (-ing)
dates, times, events

Students also enjoyed this rap video explaining the difference between the two verbs.

Wacky Word of the Week: Aplomb

aplomb

Noun Self-confidence or assurance, esp. when in a demanding situation.

Synonyms self-confidence - self-assurance

Los Mapas

Sixth grade students were learning prepositions (giving and receiving directions) in Spanish and we decided to learn where the buildings of the school were located. We took a walk around the campus and drew maps of the school in our notebooks. We then labeled the buildings and the students decided to create maps of the school, but in Spanish. Students created maps from Google Earth, 3D maps and large scaled maps all representing their school. When students presented their projects, they told the location of some buildings using the prepositions they learned earlier. 

Wacky Word of the Week: Moxie

moxie 

Noun Slang. 

Force of character, determination, or nerve.