Week in Review (Sept 12 - 16)

SCIENCE
“Week in Review”
Sept 12 - 16

MONDAY and TUESDAY we “Saved Sam” by writing procedures to get him off the boat (cup), onto the life raft (life saver), flipping the boar right side up (cup), and placing both Sam and the life raft into the boat. This lesson was to teach the kids that the most important thing about performing an experiment is that a good experiment is repeatable! In order to ensure an experiment is repeatable you must have two things (1) step-by-step procedure and (2) materials list.

After this we passed out the study guide (which will be much shorter and streamlined next time), passed back old assignments and papers, and took home our lab journal to study for the quiz. Since we don’t have a book to study, we use these resources (study guide, journal, old assignments) as well as Google Classroom for all the information needed to complete the study guide and review for quizzes or test.

Every quiz preparation will include the following: (1) Study Guide (2) All graded assignments (3) Lab Journal (4) Google Classroom and my website www.mrlowescience.net

WEDNESDAY and THURSDAY we learned about Step 5 of the scientific method – Record/Analyze Data. In order to teach this concept we did an experiment in which all the students put their birthdays on a sticky note and we made a large, classroom bar graph! As we conducted this experiment I talked with the kids about the importance of using a graph to display the data collected in a science experiment. We did almost everything in class and their homework was to simply write their conclusion to the experiment based on the graph we created in class.

After this we took our online quiz using the Chromebooks and Google Classroom. All science quizzes this year (and most other classes) will be taken on the Chromebooks using Google Classroom. It’s quick and easy to use, I can add pictures, graphs, and even videos to their quizzes, and with Google we can get them graded much quicker than the old school way of grading them by hand.

FRIDAY we focused on turning in all our work including Birthday Science and our Project! If you recall, the instructions for the project included the presentation (25 Points) AND A LAB REPORT (25 points) – These are not the same thing… the presentation is performing the experiment in class (or doing a PowerPoint or Google Slideshow) and the paper is a written account of what happened in your experiment using the steps of the scientific method.
Of course we didn’t get near to finishing because of “Fast Friday” but we will finish up the first of next week and will then be moving on to our next unit… Simple Machines and Energy!

If you have any questions or concerns please email me at lowej@conwayschools.net or call the school at (501) 450-6675. Thank you and have a great weekend! 

Assignments turned in for the week…

• “Save Sam” Lab – 10 points
• “Birthday Science” – 15 points
• Quiz “Nature of Science” – 30 points
• Project “Scientific Method” – 50 points