Week In Science - Light, Electricity and Magnets

Monday - We started our new unit on Light, Electricity and Magnets with our title page and a sneak peek of our vocabulary for the unit, which we then put together in our BINGO boards. I put together a PowerPoint of the vocabulary with pictures and went through it while students wrote the words on their bingo board. Students became excited for the unit because I was able to show them pictures of things they will be putting together in the unit (electromagnets, series circuits, etc.).

Tuesday - Properties of Light. Revised several Promethean Planet resources into a lesson. Students read their notebook page on the left hand side. We did a couple of in class examples of light traveling in a straight line with a flashlight and how distance affects brightness. I went over how to make a web using information from the left hand side with students. Then students were tasked with making a web on the right hand side using the highlighted key points. I showed the BrainPop video "Rainbows". Students went outside with Prisms.

Wednesday - Refraction, Reflection, Absorption. Had made waves of light out of paper that I had laminated.. Demonstrated how light refracts (covered with prisms the day before), reflects, and absorbs. Had students take turn with my waves of light (students wearing different colored tops got to come up and other students got to put the waves down the shirt of the colors that got absorbed and then "refracted" the light color that we see). Students made an "r" with their pointer finger (and said "refraction" - think of how the little boy in the shining would have done "redrum" and that is how I had them do it, they hugged each other to demonstrate absorbption, and bounced off each other for reflection.

Thursday - Reviewed light to date, read the left hand assignement from yesterday (I am putting some AIMES rubberband books about light on the right hand side next week). Practiced our Refraction, Reflection, Absorption. Watched Magic School Bus Makes a Rainbow with students. Made connections to what we have been discussing in class.

Friday - Quick review. Students took 10 question quiz. We made secret messages using the book Color Analyzers - Investigating Light and Color (GEMS Teacher's Guide for Grades 5-8) and red jello. This tied into our discussion of absorbtion and reflection of light. Students made their own secret messages.

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Picture of the Day - Activity

I attended a training class and a science coach shared an activity that he does with his students to help them differentiate between observations, inferences, and predictions. He puts a picture on the interactive white board as a warm up (he gets the pictures from a variety of sources but uses National Geographic's Picture of the Day a lot). The picture above is from the National Geographic site. He has the students make five observations. Then he makes the students make five inferences. Finally he has the students make five predictions. He does this every day and it really drives home the difference between those three key inquiry vocabulary terms. I've done this activity with both my sixth and fourth grade science classes and the students really got into it and became proficient at telling me the difference between those terms.

Weathering, Erosion, and Deposition Activity

I saw this activity at a science conference years ago and haven't had a chance to use it in a classroom until this week (mainly because I didn't teach weathering, erosion, and deposition). It is a great way to reinforce the definition of the weathering, erosion, and deposition in a highly kinesthetic manner. Basically you break the students up into groups of three. One group is "Weathering" another group is "Erosion" and the third group is "Deposition". Add tape to the back because you are going to stick them to the forehead of the children in each group. The "weathering" students get a sheet of paper that is their "rock" they will be breaking down. At the start of the activity the "weathering" students will start ripping tiny pieces of their "rock" and handing it to the "erosion" students. The "erosion" students will be running their tiny piece of "rock&

Bill Nye Songs with Lyrics

At the end of the Bill Nye videos he always has a fun song that goes with the episode. You can find many of the songs as stand alone videos on YouTube. This came in handy because today I am teaching a lesson on layers of the atmosphere and found a song from his Atmosphere video on YouTube titled "Fresh Aire." I really wanted to remix it and put the lyrics on the video (so the kids could sing along and see how the lyrics matched the lesson). The first thing I did was found a site that has all the Bill Nye lyrics posted used my YouTube downloader ( see instructions here ) and downloaded the song. I then imported the video into Movie Maker Live and used the caption feature to put the lyrics on the different frames (cutting and pasting from the lyrics site into Movie Maker Live). I saved the video and reposted to YouTube so other teachers could use the video with lyrics (the finished video is posted above). The process was pretty easy and I am thinking about doing it for more

Notebooking, Teaching, and Technology

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