Somewhere underneath all that blue and pink stuff on the map is Arkansas and Missouri. No school today as we continue to receive more freezing rain, sleet, and even a little snow. Looking like we will not continue back to school until Thursday or so. In the meantime, since I can't leave the house, I will be spending a lot of time with my Xbox.
Now that we have selected our topics for science fair, on Monday we will explore the scientific method and the role it will play in our experiments. We are going to use one of my favorite TV shows, Myth Busters, to preform this task. We are going to use this show to study the different steps of the scientific method.
This past week our students have been studying ballads. Ballads are poems that tell a story. They date back to medieval times and were told by singers called Minstrels. We have focused on two famous ballads in particular, Lord Randall and Barbra Allen. These are two classic stories of love, heartbreak, and death. Aspects to all good relationship, right???
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We continued our use of microscopes today as I introduced two new objects to my students. Along with the observations from the clipping of the newspaper "e" they made yesterday, students were asked to draw their observations of a feather and a picture from a magazine that they viewed using a microscope.
The top picture is of the setup we used to view the feather, using a 4x objective. I was able to manipulate my camera to get a picture of what the field of view looked like. Students were impressed with the fact that all of these pictures were made up of such little dots.
Once again, the top picture is our standard dry mount setup with two slides and a feather. In the bottom field of view picture, you can see the stem of the feather with all of the vane extending from it. Most students compared this picture to fish bones, and also commented on the small hair like objects extending from the stem. Tomorrow we will continue our use of the microscopes, examining different objects and using different objectives.
After the craziness that was inauguration day yesterday, we were able to return to some normalcy today. We started our science lesson by giving a general introduction to microscopes.
Students were given two slides and a small clipping of a letter from a newspaper, and asked to make a dry mount using these materials. Students were then asked to make observations based upon their findings.
We will continue using the microscopes tomorrow, looking at different materials. We are working our way up to looking at aquatic life forms, which we should start in a week or so.
Wow, America can really put on a show....
Students, your assignment for communication arts is to reply to the question, "what does this day mean to you?" Be as descriptive as possible, feel free to explain any feelings or thoughts about the speech and the inauguration. Visitors, feel free to add your thoughts as well.
