My Science Homework

After completing the construction of our constellation images from yesterday’s class, today students spent time documenting the tale to accompany their constellation. For reminders, check out the handout from yesterday: Your Name in Stars. This story only has a few requirements:

Minimum length: 3 paragraphs (remember, a paragraph is 5-7 sentences)
Must include […]

Your name in stars! That is the project we began today as students constructed a grid of stars that was formulated by placing their name alongside a grid of the alphabet, thus creating a spread of stars unique to their own name. This project is intended as a brief respite from the usual […]

Today’s objectives centered on how to utilize a sky map to locate constellations and other objects in the night sky. As a means of making the discussion more universal - and more technical - three terms are to be used: Altitude, Zenith, and Horizon. We defined each and then sketched a diagram […]

What is a constellation and why are they important?  Those were our guiding questions today as we began the Astronomy content in earnest.  We began by simply defining the term constellation as a “section of the sky containing a recognizable star pattern.”  The key difference between this and the definition most students had devised at […]

What is “Astronomy”? That was the opening question of the day and we defined as this:

The study of celestial bodies & phenomena
Includes planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, comets, asteroids, etc…
Incorporates chemistry, physics, math, and other areas

Students then had a chance to reflect on both their background knowledge of astronomy as well as their questions […]

Today we tackled the second Chemistry Test as we closed this unit.  Grades will be compiled over the weekend and powerschool will be updated, as I’ve recently acquired a temporary replacement computer that will allow me to keep grades updated through the remainder of the semester.
No homework was assigned following the test - just have […]

Today was spent organizing resources and completing the questions on the study guide in preparation for tomorrow’s chemistry test.
A large percentage of students (and parents!) were not pleased with the performance on the last chemistry test. I have fielded dozens of questions from parents and students alike asking “what can be done to raise […]

Today we tied up many loose ends before next week’s test:

Reviewed the quiz from Tuesday by going through each question and correcting mistakes.  This material will be on next week’s test
Completed the Chemistry K-W-L that we began back in October
Worked on the 5-W’s write-up on the “Science in the News” article about the murder of […]

After turning in the Fireworks article response questions, today we discussed plasma. We started by discussing its definition as the fourth state of matter. We then talked about several examples of plasma both here on Earth (fluorescent lights, lightning, the Northern Lights, etc…) and in other parts of the universe (stars).
Following the discussion on Plasma, […]

By demonstrating the flame tests of six common elements (Calcium, sodium, barium, copper, strontium, and potassium) we were able to observe the color that is characteristic of each element (Red/orange, orange/yellow, yellow/green, green, deep red, and purple, respectively). It is different chemical compounds such as these that are used in fireworks to give them their […]