Today was the first day for students to return. We kicked off the new semester by starting a new unit in science class. We are switching our focus from catastrophic events to diversity of life. In this unit we will be studying various life forms and their characteristics.
To start our lesson, today we focused on what it means for something to be living or non-living. The video above is of a substance called
camphor. We placed this substance in a petri dish on an overhead projector to observe how reacts to water. As you can see from the video, the substance moved in a various patterns and directions. The question the students had to answer was "is this substance alive?" In addition we took sometime to categorize objects as either living, non-living, and undecided.
Tomorrow we will continue our discussion about what defines a living thing, and we will also create mini-pods as well.
Mr. McClung
Lab experiments do not always go off without a hitch.....today was a perfect example. While trying to collect samples for our minipods today, I found myself directing traffic between my students and the tractor that was cleaning up from the mobile classrooms that were recently removed. Don't worry, we managed.....somehow.
We began our study of life forms today by preparing mini-pods to study aquatic organisms. Our students collected samples of soil, grass/leafs, and water.
In this experiment we did have a control and a variable. In two of the classes we used regular water from the sink, and in Mrs. Drake's Class we used water from a koi pond from outside.
Tomorrow we will continue our discussion about what defines a living thing, and we will also create mini-pods as well.
To the stocks! Thank goodness I didn't have to stay long.....
