Thursday, February 14, 2013

Thursday, Feb. 14

Happy Valentine's Day to you all!!!

It has been another wild and crazy week.  We have started our next lab activity - LAB #4.  This one is one travel and we will be creating a speed vs. time graph.  Last week, we had a lab activity that allowed us to create a position vs. time graph.  These are the two graphs that the state wants us to use to describe the motion of an object.  This LAB #4 is fun because we are researching travel destinations.  The kids are in pairs and get to pick their own starting point and ending point.  They will be checking out driving, flying, and either trains or buses.  It has been pretty fun, so far.  Based on the graphs and charts, with our information in it, we will decide which mode of travel is the fastest.  There are some other factors to consider, which we have discussed already, and had lots of fun with!!!  With the completion of this lab, the kids will have 20 extra credit points in their folders to put toward their grade at the end of the grading period.

Interims are due out tomorrow, but with the dance in the afternoon, I will most likely get mine out next Wednesday.  Don't forget that there is not school on Monday and the kids do not go on Tuesday because of the Teacher in-service day.  Enjoy their four days off!!!

Well, I hope you have a great weekend!  Remember, you can email me or call me, if you ever have any questions about what we are doing.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Thursday, Feb. 7, 2013

Whew!  What a week we have had!  We finally got to show the voice threads.  It took a few days, but we got them all in.  Overall, they were good.  I gave the kids a classroom blog assignment and asked them which of the four computer tools we have used this year they liked the best and why.  I am curious to see what they have to say.  We have started our last physical science topic and it is on motion.  For this, we will be using graphs to look at position and speed of objects.  This is basically going to be an extension of last year's math skills on graphs.  Students will be finding how fast an object is moving - its motion, and then looking at its speed.  There are two different graphs we will use for this.  They are the position vs. time graph and the speed vs. time graph.

I have two lab activities the students will complete to help them use these graphs.  One lab is completed here in the room using two different balls, a meterstick and a stopwatch.  The next lab will be one using internet sources.  They will be researching travel times between a starting point and a destination.  It looks to be really fun.  Well, that is all we have been doing for this week.  We will be working on these two labs into next week.  Have a great weekend!