Thursday, October 28

Wow! We have been busy the past couple of days. I set up a class wiki for each of my six classes. They will be starting a new project on body systems next week and all their information will be put on the wiki. It is a totally new piece of technology for these students. They have never worked with anything like this before. I want them to have fun with it and learn something at the same time. I will give you the address for the wikis, so that you can see what your kids are doing. You will have to find out what class period your child is in, so that you know which address to type in the address bar. You will also need his/her login name and password to get into the wiki.

First period students go to www.mmsfirstperiod.wikispaces.com/
Third period students go to www.mmsthirdperiod.wikispaces.com/
Fourth period students go to www.mmsfourthperiod.wikispaces.com/
Fifth period students go to www.mmsfifthperiod.wikispaces.com/
Sixth period students go to www.mmssixthperiod.wikispaces.com/
Seventh period students go to www.mmsseventhperiod.wikispaces.com/

I hope you enjoy the sites. The students should start putting information on the pages sometime next week, after they start researching. You can check out the directions by going to the page labeled "Body Systems" or "Beginning of Body Systems". It will be found in a box on the right side of the screen.

We now have terms 6-10 from the list. We will be having a quiz over those five on Tuesday. Well, I guess that brings us to the end of this posting. It has been a trip to get everyone on the wiki. I am so excited about using, though, and really hope it works!

Monday - October 25, 2010

Hello! It is the first day of the second nine weeks. Today we started looking at the next step in our study of life science. We looked last week at cells, so today we took a look at what it takes to make up a human body. The students took some notes from the Smart board that I want to put on here. If they loose their notes or was absent, they can come here and get them. I tried to copy the notes here, but they would not copy and paste, so I will just have to type them in. We started of by writing down the word cell, then we discussed how a group of cells that work together to do a certain job create tissue. We put an arrow pointing toward the word tissue. Next, we discussed how a group of tissues all working together to do a certain job create an organ. So, we put down an arrow facing the word organ. After that, we talked about how there are organs that work together to create an organ system. We put an arrow facing the words organ system. I hate that I can't demonstrate that to you here.

We, also, discussed two terms. They are multicellular and unicellular. Humans and most organisms are multicellular which means many, more than one cell. Bacteria, viruses, and protozoa are examples of unicellular which means one cell. The students wrote down these terms and the definitions. They will be starting body sytem projects in a day or so. I will put on here when they do and what will be expected of them.

They got term #8 today from the list. I will not give them one tomorrow (Tuesday) because I have two videos on body systems to show them. Yesterday was a busy day, but we accomplished so much! Have a great day and I will talk to you soon!

Wednesday, Oct. 20

Hello!
The students are finishing up their research and drawings of the plant and animal cells. They have found out that animal cells do not have cell walls or chloroplasts. It was funny to listen to them yell at me from across the room that they could not find these parts in the animal cell. I would ask them what that told them and they would reply that the animal cell doesn't have them. I love it when the light bulb comes on! :-) We started on the next set of terms today. They got #6 from the list. Remember the list is on the home page for you to look at.

Tomorrow is the nine weeks test. It should not take very long. We are going to be starting body systems next. I will let you know, when we do. Have a great day and I will talk to you soon!

Newest update

Hello to everyone!

It is Friday. The kids all love Friday. We spent today working on their big projects that are due on November 30. The requirement sheet for these can be found at the top of the home page.

We will be having our nine weeks test on Thursday, October 21. Students can study from the observation/inference, lab safety, and scientific method tests. Plus, there will be the first five terms we have taken down in class. That list is also on the home page. I will be giving the students back their scientific method test on Tuesday and going over it with them. It has taken me a lot longer to grade it than I thought. There were several questions that they had written answers on and that takes longer to grade. I have three classes left to grade and I brought them home with me to do over the weekend.

I will be sending home a letter with the address to this blog in it so that everyone will be able to get on here and read what is going on in our class. Have a great weekend and I will talk to you next week!

First posting to blog.

Hello, and welcome everyone! I am going to try out this blog and see if everyone likes using it. I am hoping it is a way for you keep up with what is going on in our classroom. I will not be using personal information about anyone at all, but just telling what we are doing. This is new to me, so bear with me. I am hoping to find a way to post notes that the students take in class on here, so that the parents have a copy of them, too.

What needs to be told first is about our nine weeks test. It will be on Thursday, October 21. The test will cover observation/inference, lab safety, the scientific method, and the five terms that have been given so far. I am going to see if I can attach those terms to this blog. If I can't, then I will simply type them in here.

The students are currently working on a project about plant and animal cells. They are researching the differences between the two and discovering the functions of the parts of the cells. They will be drawing pictures of the two cells, when their research is complete. They also have their big science projects that they are working on at home. I will be using one day a week to work on them here at school, but they should be working at home, too. They have chosen either the science fair experiment, a demonstration, or a report.

Please feel free to respond to this blog posting. I look forward to talking to you.