Our Week in Science

Monday - The main focus of the lesson was Tides. First we reviewed, updated our moon phase of the day, then I showed a Promethean slide show I made on the subject and embedded a short tide video clip from streamline. We read the left hand side information, looked at the textbook information about tides, and I had students draw a diagram of the moon pulling at the tides on the right hand side. One class was done early so we played vocabulary BINGO.

Tuesday - The main focus of the lesson was Shadows. I had students tell me what they already knew about shadows. Then students took turns being the sun and my shadow as I verbally went through how shadows change as the position of the sun changes in the sky. I showed a Promethean Planet download about shadows. We went outside to see if we could spot our shadow (no luck...cloudy all week...but it did get students outside :) We watched a streamline video about shadows and direction (approx. 15 minutes long). I did not do a left or right hand assignment for shadows. I think my brain might be ready for the holiday break because I could think of NOTHING students could do on the right hand side. Although, had it been a sunny day they could have sketched a partners shadow in their book with the time noted.

Wednesday - I was at all day Promethean Board training so I had a substitute. I had the substitute play a Magic School Bus video called "Out of this World" (they also have another one titled "Lost in Space") and then I had her get the students started on their SOLAR SYSTEM acrostic (rough draft). This is going to be their last page in their astronomy unit so I wanted them to rough draft it out first on recycled paper (I had the sub put them in clock partners).

Thursday - We had our science fair on Tuesday and I did not have time to get all the science fair projects presented last Friday so I put aside this day to present. All classes were at different stages of presentation so it either took the entire class period or about half. Those who were done early continued on their rough draft of the solar system acrostic. If they were done I would approve and they could do the final version in their notebook.

Friday - Guidance Activity during each of my three science classes so there was no science class.

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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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