Week of April  22nd, 2013

First let me say that Newton would be proud! That’s right folks! Sir Newton would be very impressed by your knowledge and results so far. You have done a most excellent job of acquiring all this information and applying it in the form of skits, discussions, activities and demonstrations.

Hi Everyone! That’s right, for every Mousetrap car we build, mice all over the world will be celebrating its use for science and not for them…… (”Whatever, Mr Olivas”)

..And now to the Mousetrap Cars and the Labbing Out Loud (LOL!) project!!! Year of the Snake you say? Ha! I think not – NO ONE is saving Snakes in science!

This Week’s Learning Targets

• Apply and demonstrate proper lab safetyl
• Build the Mousetrap Car of Science!
• Practice the scientific method while applying all the basic laws of forces and motion
  

Activities – These will help us hit the targets!

• Mousetrap car assembly
• Project Overview

Learning At Home

• LOL Planning

• Dont forget to visit the LOL! wiki below for examples and ideas of your Forces and Motion video-virtual lab!

The Wiki!

Week of March 18th, 2013

Hi everybody!

To compliment our sections on speed, velocity and acceleration, we will start activities and experimental design on the physics of Forces.  Max Axiom will guide us through some very cool topics on forces and motion as well! Finally , we will apply all of our current knowledge on Motion and Scientific Inquiry with a wrap up of our speed experiments from last week. We will generate some visuals from our data to see clearly explain and answer our question of investigation. What is the best way to show our data visually? So, which was the class with the fastest average speed in a 50 meter sprint?

This Week’s Learning Targets

• Calculate average speed by taking measurements of distance and time
• Use data to infer relationships and patterns and make conclusions
• Define and demonstrate force, friction, inertia, momentum, gravity and mass

Activities – These will help us hit the targets!

• BrainPop introduction with Newton, forces and energy
• Lab Report reference newsletter jigsaw posters
• We will need this site for understanding graphs and this site as well
• Here is your Lab-Report-Rubric-newest2.doc
• Lab Analysis and Conclusion video shorts
• Max Axiom Literature read

Learning At Home

• Newsletter inquiry questions
• Lab analysis and conclusion videos
• Vocab ch 2 (sec 2)
• A helpful site for MS physics – scroll down to FORCES and LAWS of MOTION packets!

Week of March 4, 2013

Welcome to our new unit! Here’s a preview!

WEEK OF FEBRUARY 25, 2013

Welcome back again everybody! We hope you had a wonderful time with family and friends during the Chinese New Year Break.

As you know, these next two weeks are dedicated to learning all about Egypt in ALL your classes! How cool is that? You will learn and perform Egyptian dances and ceremonies in Drama, Make ceramic jars and sarcophagi in Art, play traditional music in Band and Orchestra, cook authentic foods, build a scale pyramid, design and make costumes, create agricultural solutions with Minecraft in Humanities, work together to carry blocks up the stadium bleachers in PE and finally dissect and mummify frogs in Science! Wow – you and I are so lucky to be a part of all this.

Many of you are now certified to perform the dissections after you performed the virtual iPad dissection, turned in your teaching screencast and passed the written test with >80%. Please see me if you have not received your certificate.

I look forward to seeing you apply and share your knowledge this week as you perform your dissections. Remember that we’ll be in “surgery” for three hours in science on the special schedule on your dissection day. See you in the lab!

Week of January 27, 2013

Hi everybody! What do TED talks, Chevy Chase and the classic PASSWORDS TV game all have in common? They were all a part of our “E-learnings” last week! Great job strategizing and helping each other at the same time. This week, we will continue to finish out our Electricity and Magnetism unit in the next few classes before Chinese New Year with foundations of electricity and then lots more interactive activities. I look forward to seeing you continue to make even more connections in this weeks “tasks” challenge.

This Week’s Learning Targets

• Identify the parts of an electrical circuit
• Compare insulators and conductors
• Demonstrate the relationship between current, voltage and resistance
• Analyze the factors that affect the resistance to electrical current
• Test and compare series and parallel circuits

Activities – These will help us hit the targets!

• Reading Jigsaw – Ch 2 sec 2 – Electric Current(groups)
• Circuit Skits  - (groups)
• Making Connections Build-A-Circuit-And-Test challenge! (groups)
• Passwords review game
• “Venn-Diagramming” Circuits
• E-Tasks challenge
• Ch 2 sec 2 and 4 wksheet

Learning At Home

• Review Sheets for Ch 2 sec 2 and 4

Week of January 21, 2013

Hi everybody! Great  job on our latest assessment. You all showed a high level of expertise and mastery in the areas of atoms, magnetism and static electricity. If you need to re-test, you may do so this week, Monday or Tuesday, just let me know and Ms. Fung-Kee-Fung and I will set it up for those two days.

We will finish out our Electricity and Magnetism unit in the next few classes before Chinese New Year with some foundations of electricity and then lots of interactive activities and a challenge lab. I look forward to seeing you continue to make even more connections!

This Week’s Learning Targets

• Identify the parts of an electrical circuit
• Compare insulators and conductors
• Demonstrate the relationship between current, voltage and resistance
• Analyze the factors that affect the resistance to electrical current
• Test and compare series and parallel circuits

Activities – These will help us hit the targets!

• Finish Brain Pop circuits (individually)
• Andy Thelwell connects with The Blobz Virtual Lab (individually)
• iPad Lab – Series and Parallel circuits (pairs)
• Gizmos!
• Reading Jigsaw – Ch 2 sec 2 – Electric Current(groups)
• Circuit Skits  - (groups)
• Making Connections Build-A-Circuit-And-Test challenge! (groups)
• Passwords review game
• “Venn-Diagramming” Circuits

Learning At Home

• Read ch 2, sec 4 (Electric Circuits)
• Ch 2 sec 2 and 4 vocabulary

Week of January 14, 2013

Hi Everybody! Welcome to 2013!

Great to have everyone back safe and sound.  Recently, we have shared some pretty shocking ideas in our latest unit – Electricity and Magnetism! “Currently,” we are making connections between these two big themes by studying methods of electron transfer. We will continue to look at Static Electricity this week and then move on to some electrifying activities as we head on over to Circuits. At the end of this week, we will also have a short summative test on the concepts we have covered so far in our E&M unit.

Next week – We’ll be working on a few virtual labs on our laptops, some iPads apps and then finally get our hands on some actual wires, loads and batteries to make some more connections. How can you resist?!

This Week’s Learning Targets

• Demonstrate/perform examples of electric charge, static electricity and electron transfer
• Identify the interaction of like and unlike charges (magnetic poles, subatomic particles, static electric charges)
• Demonstrate ways in which charges can be transferred (friction, induction, conduction)
• Identify the parts of an electrical circuit (energy source, conductor, and load)

Activities – These will help us hit the targets!

• More Static Electricity demos and activities!
• Your shocking blog post reviews
• Proof of Preparation (POP) Sheet for summative assessment this week
• Atoms, Magnetism and Static electricity concepts test
• Finish Bill Nye/ Brain Pop circuits
• COMING UP – Andy Thelwell connects & iPad Lab Circuits

Learning At Home

• Review of E&M concepts so far!
• POP sheet

Greetings guys and gals!

Week of December 10, 2012

This week we will put our learning of magnets to the test with a lab where you will test various materials for magnetic properties. First you’ll make your predictions (not betting!) and then try them our with our SAS magnet collection. How do we know if something can be magnetic? What are those magnetic items called? What role do domains play in making something a magnet? What about atoms? Where do they fit into all this? These are some of the things you’ll need to consider as we decide if certain materials are magnetic or not.

Learning Targets (What we need to know!)

• Explain how magnetic poles interact
  
• Describe magnetic force and how it relates to magnetic fields
• Show how magnetic domains are aligned in temporary and permanent magnets
• Explain how atoms and magnetism are related

Activities (These are how we will learn/hit the targets)

• Gizmos wrap up!
• Bill Nye – Magnetism
• Magnetic Blog Post – Use the vocabulary from the Gizmos lab and your photos from the Magnetic Field Lines activity in a blog post about magnetism. Make sure your vocabulary words are in BOLD! Here are the vocab terms

• Attract – to pull together.

• Bar magnet – a simple rectangular magnet with a north pole at one end and a south pole at the other.

• Ferromagnetic – strongly attracted to magnets.
  • Ferromagnetic materials become magnetized when exposed to a magnetic field.
  • Ferromagnetic materials retain their magnetism for a while after the magnetic field is removed.

• Magnetize – to turn into a magnet.

• North pole – the part of a magnet that is attracted to the North Magnetic Pole of Earth.

• Repel – to push away

• South pole – the part of a magnet that is attracted to the South Magnetic Pole of Earth.

• Magnetic field lines Magneto-Art
• Magnetic or Not?! – testing materials for magnetism

Learning at Home (ok, I’ll call it homework!)

• Vocab of Science – These words are very attractive, but some can be repulsive