Independent Science Projects

In the final weeks of the school year, the class experienced and learned a lot about a variety of topics. Each student had three weeks to research a topic of their own choosing. They had to identify essential questions they would answer, document their learning, and share with the class. There were many great presentations and discussions that I wish we could have spent the whole year doing work like this!

I had hoped to collect links to all the presentation tools that the students shared, but the end of the year happened and they were gone!  Here are a few links and I will continue to populate this post as I receive them.  They are not the whole presentation, but it should give you a taste of what we experienced.
 
LC: Tracking of Marine Animals
KK: Solar Panel for Charging Laptop
KS: How to Make Ice Cream
CL : DNA Mapping Prezi
NW: Coral Reefs
SW: Oil Spills
SO: Color Preferences with Food
MG: Parallel Universes
IR: Dreams
MHS: Fetal Development
MDS: Science of Baseball Pitches
TD: Earthquakes
KG: Anger
MR: Chemical Reactions

Science Independent Projects: Teaser

Coming off our Human Body and Development unit, the sixth grade is gearing up to dive into independent science projects. For weeks, the class has been requesting time to do independent research on topics of their choice. We brainstormed the guidelines for the project and created a common set of expectations and possible outcomes. The only restrictions we set were that the project had to be reasonable for the two and half week timeline that we are working within. We challenged each other to stretch ourselves and select an outcome that was not one of the old standbys (Keynote/PowerPoint, iMovie). Each student wrote up a proposal that had to be shared and approved by Wednesday.

I am most excited by the diverse and interesting set of topics and questions that are being researched. They are thoughtful and all touch upon a personal interest.  Here is a list of topics that are being tackled:

• Tagging of Marine Animals
• Anger
• Oil Spills
• Dreams
• Solar Panels
• Ocean Currents
• Physics of Baseball
• Other Dimensions & Stephen Hawking
• DNA and DNA Mapping
• Influence of Color on Taste
• Fetal Development
• Earthquakes
• Relationship between Fish & Coral
• Pedal-Powered Ice Cream Maker

Be on the look out for more details on these intriguing topics in the coming weeks.  Feel free to stop a sixth grader and ask them about their research!

Carbon Cycle Video Projects

After watching "The Inconvenient Truth," the sixth grade had many questions about global warming. To help us get a better understanding of this concept, we took a step back and study the carbon cycle. We explored what carbon is and why it is important with regards to global warming. Key vocabulary terms we studied were: carbon sources, carbon sinks, carbon reservoirs, methane gas and carbon dioxide. 

To solidify their understanding, groups of students created a video to demonstrate their understanding of the carbon cycle, their knowledge of the key vocabulary terms, and how the carbon cycle impacts global warming. 

Check out the videos!

The Carbon Cycle with K & C:  KG and CL share their knowledge talk show-style.

Carbon Cycle:  NW, IR, and SO video was paired with an informative poster

Carbon Cycle - Substitute Teacher: TD, KK, and MR educate with a substitute teacher

Fox 5 - Carbon Cycle: MHS, MG, and SW share via a news broadcast and rap.

Carbon Cycle: LC, MDS, and KS illustrate their way through the carbon cycle.

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

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.

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!

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?

Miles to Go Drug Prevention Education

On Friday, the sixth grade welcomed back Kelly T. from the Miles to Go Drug Prevention Education program. She worked with the class at the end of last year, and they were excited to work with her again. This year, the class took on the Amazing Race Challenge. They worked in teams to learn about many of common drugs and traced their origins around the world. They learned about the drug's impact on the human body and the potential uses and abuses of the drugs.  They also took a Body Challenge where they had to identify which organs and body systems different drugs impacted.  Finally, they ended the day with the Social Challenge where the teams had to navigate a "sticky situation" and rationalize their decision. It was all very lively and engaging. 

This is a springboard for many upcoming conversations we will have about drugs in our upcoming CPR meetings. Thank you to Kelly for providing a great foundation for our future work!

EnviroSchool Comes to TCS

The TCS community had a rare opportunity today. The third through seventh grades participated in a wonderful program called EnviroSchool. We began the day with a visit from Dr. Zoolittle and Mother Meekat who shared a few creatures and challenged the students to a variety of games about animals and their habitats. 

We then broke up in to three groups to rotate through three stations: Splash Mobile, Green Machine and Recycling. Each involved making, doing, learning, exploring and thinking.

I think the most wonderful part of the day was watching students from different classes and grades get to know each other better, share knowledge, and have fun. Thank you to Denise P. for bringing the program to TCS and creating this wonderful learning and community building opportunity!

Math/Science Update 12 December 12

In math, the class is moving along at a steady clip. In recent weeks, we have been getting reacquainted with rational numbers. They have been practicing doing conversions between fractions, decimals, percentages. Some of us are still struggling to conceptualize these amounts and we will work on having a better grasp of them through the new year.  We are moving towards performing basic operations with these rational numbers.

In science, the class is really excited about making solar powered cars. We spent several classes learning out silicon and how it can be used to make solar panels. We discovered why solar panels are not currently a popular way to collect electricity and what variables may impact the effectiveness of our solar panel cars. We are in the early stages of construction. Be on the look out for images and information on our cars as they progress.

SNAPSHOT: Science 7 Nov 12

I had a fun today with the sixth graders trying to answer two questions: what is a volt? what is a watt? It may sound peculiar to call this "fun," but it is what I love about my job. The class was asked to do some homework to explore and find their own definitions of these terms. What came back were very intense Google/Wikipedia answers. We put them up on the board and we took them apart word by word until we had constructed our own understanding of the terms. I came up with a strangely useful analogy using football and one of our wonderful seventh graders, AH. We learned, we laughed, we wrestled with complex concepts and walked away more knowledgeable, thoughtful and content with a class well spent. 

Thank you, sixth grade for a great class!

SNAPSHOT: Science 30 Oct 12

Excited about Circuits
 The class jumped feet first into exploring electricity. We defined what electricity is and then looked at the two types of electricity: static and current electricity. Developing an understanding of these categories, the students were eager to get into the lab and get their hands on some electrical equipment. Students have had several class to experiment and dig up their understanding of how circuits work. They were challenged to make various circuits: two-battery circuits, parallel and series circuits, and circuits with motors.

Update from Carwai

Can you believe that we have already completed one month of school?! 

CPR activity: Self-Portraits

We are finally getting into our routines and finding our rhythm with the schedule. In math, we have settled into a comfortable pace. It is a mix of review and new material. We have covered topics such as exponents, order of operations, absolute value, and introduction to algebraic expressions and functions. For the next few weeks we will be immersed in operations with integers.

In science, the students are researching a different type of energy. They have sorted themselves into smaller groups and will be teaching/presenting to each other so we are all more knowledgeable about these types of energy. You should ask your child about their research!

Here is some news from Janie in the Library:

"This week we have been learning about Destiny, the library software. This program has a lot of great capabilities and can be accessed from any web browser. Students this week learned to log on and check the library for books, see what books they have checked out, and "friend" people within our school community. We also briefly discussed on-line etiquette, safety and cyber-bullying. It would be great if you could discuss this with your kids and let them practice accessing our library website. We will be using it for research projects as well as library information, so practice is great. This is a safe site, among our community only, and 1st grade and up will be learning about it.  The website is library.tcslj.org and they click on The Children's School link and then log-in. "

The class made their first trip to visit the Preschool today. We will partner with the preschoolers this year.  We hope to spend time with them, create some activities and be a resource for them. Our hope is to build community bonds with different classes this year.

CPR Discussion: Species of Monkey Discovered

Photo credit: Terese Hart @ http://www.flickr.com/photos/teresehart/

In our CPR discussion we did an Individual Share, where I presented on the new species of monkey that was discovered in the Congo. The Lesula monkey has made news around the world and you were able to ask questions to discover more about it. Here is the link from Scientific American article that I used as a resource.  Many of you asked for the link to the blog of the researchers, conservation biologist, Tom Hart and his wife Dr. Terese Hart. Their blog is called, Searching for Bonobo in Congo.