Nov. 22-24: Ozone & Quiz

 This week we're talking about ozone and taking a quiz!

Monday - Finish nitrogen and start ozone
Tuesday - Finish ozone and review
Wednesday - Quiz on nitrogen cycle and ozone

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!

I'm thankful for my job!
I'm thankful for the good days and the good students!
I'm thankful for the times when they make me laugh!
I'm thankful to go home at the end of the day!

Nov. 15-19 : Global Warming & Nitrogen Cycle

We're wrapping up our discussion about the carbon cycle, and possible human influences on it, and moving on to nitrogen. Nitrogen is important for the DNA and proteins in living things - so it's important to understand how it gets around and how we influence it as well.

Mon 15 - Greenhouse Lab (p8)
Tues 16 - Annotate global warming article
Wed 17 - Finish pg8 and play nitrogen cycle travelling game (10)
Thurs 18 - Nitrogen Cycle Notes (11)
Fri 19 - Finish notes

With the nitrogen cycle we're going to talk a lot about how humans influence the amount of nitrogen in the soil and water by adding fertilizers. Too much fertilizer can be carried away by rain water into our groundwater, rivers, and oceans. It causes algae to bloom (grow) and many algaes actually can create deadly toxins. Do humans worry too much about green lawns? This might be a good topic for discussion if you want to do some critical thinking!

Nov. 8-12: Carbon Cycle

We're talking about global warming this week... please email me if you have any quesitons about what and how I'm teaching this issue. You can email me through the Fort Herriman MS website.

Monday - Finish You're a Star projets & Carbon Cycle Notes (pg6)
Tuesday - Human Impacts on the Carbon Cycle (pg9)
Wednesday - Most 9th graders are going to the play. Those who stay will be given an alternative assignment.
Thursday - Carbon Cycle Quiz for R&S.
Friday - Finish human impacts notes.

Nov. 1-5: Carbon Cycle

The new quarter has finally arrived. Last week students took a big exam on all of our astronomy stuff that we've covered over the first quarter. They took it on Thursday and then had a chance to retake it on Friday if they didn't pass. The students who did pass went to a cool "Halloween" science demonstration put on by Mr. Hammari who also teaches Earth systems. It sounded like it was really fun, and I wish I could have gone up there to watch, but I was in charge of retesting and of my 8th graders that I had for the other half of the day.

Here's what we've done/ are doing this week:

Monday - No School
Tuesday - You're a Star work day (Apollo 13 movie in the afternoon).
Wednesday - Make new folders and recycle the old stuff - discussion on Earth's spheres (pg5)
Thursday - Half of the carbon sinks and sources lab (pg7) & part of carbon cycle notes (pg6)
Friday - Finish pg 7 lab and work on pg 6 notes

For extra credit: Post a comment describing what the colors of the bromothymol blue solution pictured here mean.

Oct 18-22: Solar System, Quiz, & Build a Planet

We've got so much to do before the end of the quarter! AHHHHHH... So here's what we've been working on this week.

Monday - Formation of the solar system (pg 15)
Tuesday - Finish pg 15
Wednesday - Quiz (Star Cycle, Heavy Elements, & Formation of the solar system)
Thursday - Design a planet
Friday - Finish designing planet computer activity.

We will be having an end of quarter test next week (hopefully on Thursday 28th). It will cover all of our astronomy stuff from the beginning of the year to the present:
    Big Bang
    Red/Blue Shift
    Microwave background radiation
    Star Cycle
    Heavy Element Formation
    Our Sun compared to other stars
    Formation of the solar system
    Requirements for life on alien planets
    Earth compared to other planets in the solar system

Oct 11-13: Heavy Elements

Another short week of school...

Monday - Heavy elements game... go through the star cycle and learn how elements fuse together to make heavier and heavier elements.
Tuesday - Review of heavy elements questions
Wednesday - You're a star explanation and beginning of project.
Thursday & Friday - FALL BREAK!!!

Oct 4-8: Reality Town & Star Life Cycle

Students had the opportunity to participate in Reality Town this Tuesday. They were given job options based on their collective GPA from 7th and 8th grade (kids with a 4.0 had unlimited options where kids with a 1.0 could only choose from a much smaller selection). They had to use their monthly wages to pay bills, buy groceries, etc. Hopefully it was a good experience for them on what the "real world" is like.

In science though, we're learning about the star cycle.

Monday - We did a brief chemistry review that hopefully will be helpful to students when we start talking about nuclear fusion... in stars... not bombs.
Tuesday - Reality Town!!! We also did a brief review of graphing. They were assigned graphing homework, but most students got it done in class. If not, then it is due Friday.
Wednesday - We did a post reality town survey and then talked about the star cycle.
Thursday - Finish star cycle notes...
Friday - Graphing homework due. Finish and grade work. Start You're a Star Project.

Sept 27-30: Big Bang!!!

We've been focusing on the Big Bang this week.

Monday - Finished Part 1 of Steven Hawking's Universe which talked about the evidence for the Big Bang and wrapped up how our theories of the creation of the universe have changed over time because of improvements in technology.

Tuesday - We read the textbook yay!!! Students read a couple pages about the current evidence for the Big Bang, specifically red shifting of stars and galaxies and cosmic microwave background radiation. After reading, they made a "mini-poster" on the back of their paper to illustrate what they learned.

Wednesday - Students attended a presentation by a banker in preparation for reality town which will be held next Tuesday. They learned how to write checks and hopefully learned a lot about credit, debt, and how to handle money.

Thursday - Quiz time again! This quiz will cover red/blue shift, Big Bang, past theories, and technology. Should be fabulous!

Friday - NOOOO SCHOOOOL!!! It's teacher comp day because of student led conferences (Wed & Thurs evenings). Enjoy your day off!

Extra Credit: Post a comment explaining what this picture is all about.

News Article Link for Doppler Effect HW

Click on the title below for a link to the news article you must read to complete the homework.

Explained: the Doppler effect

Sept 20-27: Doppler & Spectral Analysis

This week we're going to talk about the Doppler Effect... you know, that weird noise you hear when an ambulance or train passes. The Doppler Effect not only applies to sound however, it applies to all things that travel in waves - including light. Astronomers have used the Doppler Effect on light to determine that the universe is expanding... pretty cool huh? So this week we're going to talk about how stars and galaxies are analyzed and how the colors of the spectrum apply to the Doppler Effect and the Big Bang Theory. It's very cool stuff, and your student would definitely benefit from your asking him/her to explain it to you! Teaching is the best way to learn... believe me.

Sept 13-17 : Present Posters, Waves Review, & Sci Method Quiz

On Monday the students presented their cosmology posters - yay!
The rest of the week we reviewed how waves work and how sound and light are transfered via waves.
On Friday we had a quiz on the scientific method.

Hopefully you've also noticed the experiment that your student has been doing this week... they had to follow the scientific method to complete a simple experiment at home. That assignement was due today! Students have 2 assignments that they can turn in late for full credit (if they deserve full credit). The 3rd late assignment will be 20% off... B- at highest. Please encourage them to get things in on time:)

Thanks for all your support at home!

Sept 7-10 : Cosmology Research

We're jumping into science concepts this week - yay!!! Since we learned about the scientific method last week this week we're going to be doing some research on some amazing theories the scientists who came up with them.

Mon - NO SCHOOL!!! LABOR DAY!!!
Tues - Intro to cosmology research project (start research)
Wed - Research
Thurs - Meet with partner/small group to script out a podcast.
Fri - Record podcasts

The cosmology theories they will be researching are:
Atomist Theory
Geocentric Theory
Heliocentric Theory
Big Bang Theory

Each group will script and record a podcast to present their information.

Aug 30- Sept 3: Scientific Method Review

Unfortunately this week is going to get cut in to by a few assemblies and meetings. On Wednesday 1st period will be reviewing the Utah Behavior Initiative where they'll review the RATTLE rules for school in the various areas in the building. On Friday 1st and 2nd periods will be in the Code of Conduct Assembly where they'll review a lot of things from the handbook which you should have received by this point.

When we're not doing the nitty gritty stuff we'll be reviewing the scientific method. Students will have a short homework assignment to pick out the independent and dependent variables (DUE Sept 1). Most of them will have time to complete it in class.

They will be completing pages 5-7 in their notebooks this week:
 p5 - Scientific Method Notes
 p6 - Variables (with The Office)
 p7 - Chemistry Review Notes

Please remind them that if they don't finish what we do in class, it becomes homework.

...And we're back...

Aug. 26-27

Welcome to Earth Systems! This is a whirlwind course covering space, rocks, weather, water, life, matter cycles, and a whole bunch more stuff... you're students are going to go home with their heads filled!

I'm Katie Groneman, and I'm very happy to be teaching your student(s) this year - we're going to have a good time.

First a few announcements:

Calvin & Hobbes by Bill Watterson

1. Back to school night is next Wed. (Sept 1) at starting at 5:45pm. Everyone will be meeting in the auditorium to start. Then you will go to each class to meet the teachers. We ask that you please keep to the schedule - it makes life sooooo much easier for us if we only have to say something 7 times instead of many many more if people drop in whenever they want to.
2. Your student will be bringing a letter home that describes what the class is all about.
3. One of the most important things in that letter is the description of the folder that we'll have for class with all of their work in it.
4. Please help your student stay on top of their grades by checking them on Skyward with him/her as often as time permits. If you don't know your Skyward password, call the counseling office (801.412.2455).

Now for the stuff we've been doing... On the first day we played a game with bean bags to model what a system is and how it works. Hopefully they can explain to you what we did and how it shows that systems are complicated.

Over the next few days we'll be talking about procedures for the room (how to turn in homework, how to sign in when they are tardy, etc.) Then we'll jump into sciency things next week.

We are focusing a lot on our Freshmen this year, and hope that they will stand up to the challenges that we're going to pose for them. You might find that this year will be a little harder than last - all in hopes of getting them ready for high school. I look forward to an awesome year!

June 1: LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL!!!!

Believe it or not, teachers are probably more excited for the summer break than the kids are. It's our last week of school - here's what's on the docket:

Monday - Memorial Day (No school)
Tuesday - Awards Assembly & Memory Books (I signed a few, I'd like to see a few more...)
Wednesday - Lagoon Day/Cleaning the room in the morning
Thursday - Activities and more memory books if you missed someone
Friday - I won't be here, so don't come.

Thanks for a great year!!!

May 24: Solar Ovens & Oil Spills

It snowed on Monday (the weatherman forgot to consult me - I really was hoping to have my 2nd period 9th graders cooking with their solar ovens that day). Instead, they worked on analyzing political cartoons that discuss environmental issues. Tuesday was the complete opposite - sunny and warm. 6th and 7th period 9th graders were able to use their solar ovens to make s'mores at the least (some groups even brought cookie dough and hotdogs to try. I was impressed with their creativity and ingenuity. Maybe they can use what they learned over the summer and make some treats at home. 6th and 7th periods will be doing the political cartoon analysis on Thursday (and hopefully it will be sunny for 2nd period to do solar ovens that day as well).

We've also been discussing the recent oil spill since we've been talking about renewable and nonrenewable energy over the last few weeks. Students will read some articles, we'll do a little oil spill clean up lab, and will look at the biological devastation oill spills produce.

May 17-21: Solar Oven Construction and Renewable Simulation

This week (as you've probably noticed) students will be asking you if they can borrow that leftover pizza box and if they can take the tin foil to school. We're making solar ovens! After doing a lot of research, students are finally going to be constructing, and hopefully testing their solar ovens. I've been watching the weather, and it's not looking very good for us - everyone start sending positive energy to the sun, and maybe it will actually peek out from behind the clouds.

After solar oven construction (so we can pull them out at a moment's notice), we'll be finishing up our renewable energy unit with a simple simulation on how the rate of energy use changes our needs for developing energy producing technologies. We'll be holding a short quiz on their energy notes (pg32) early next week.

May 10-14: Solar Oven & Zoo Research

This week we will be researching information that will be pertinent to our building a solar oven next week. Students will look learn about reflection, absorption, and insulation as they research different designs for solar ovens. They might be coming home within the next few days with strange sounding requests for alluminum foil, cardboard boxes, etc. We will start building them next week and will test them (and hopefully make some s'mores) at the beginning of the next week.

We've also been finishing the zoo biome project that we started several weeks ago. Students will be typing a paragraph about the abiotic/biotic factors that need to be considered when designing a zoo enclosure for a particular animal. Then they will find a few pictures, and we'll paste them onto a "zoo" template in the classroom.

May 3: Renewable Energy

This week we've introduced renewable energy with some notes. Students have brain stormed about the uses of solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, hydroelectic, etc.

April 25: CRT Week

This week students will be taking their science CRT (Criterion Referenced Test). This is a state test written by a committee of teachers to test how well students have grasped the state core curriculum.

We reviewed like crazy, and I'm very hopeful that they did great on the test! We probably won't get scores back until summer time.

For the first few days post CRT we will wind down with a movie about the supervolcano underneath Yellowstone. It's a made-for-TV movie and does have some dramatic scenes in it involving people in a pretty stressful situation, which is why I needed parent permission to have the students watch it. It is a "documentary type" show that depicts what it would be like if the supervolcano under Yellowstone were to erupt (it's shot as though it is a current event - although it has not yet happened). It fits well with our plate tectonics unit and should be a good reward for having worked so hard for CRTs. Hopefully it doesn't scare them too much... just a little... enough to help them respect Earth's ability to make human life more than a little chaotic.

Earth Day

Happy Earth Day (yesterday) to everyone!

We looked at these cool photos of the Iceland volcano as a reminder that the Earth is pretty powerful, but still needs protection: Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano.

April 19: CRT Review

We've come to the end!!! It's time to take that big end of year, state required test - the CRT. We will be taking our test during class time on April 28th and 29th (the 30th is the make-up day). Please do everything that you can to ensure that your student is at school for those days.

In order to help the students do their absolute best on this exam we will be review this week. Reviewing an entire year's worth of information is a daunting task, but I'm already impressed with how much they remember. We'll be playing review games, working on a few worksheets, and taking some practice tests.

Please stress to them how important these CRT tests are because their scores will be on their permenant records and will help determine where they go from here.

End of March

Students have continued to work on their zoo projects over the last few days, but we have moved on to some new topics as well.

The first new topic we've discussed is biodiversity - how many species are present in an ecosystem. We did an activity where students "planted" different species of plants in a plot of land and they tested the effects of a plant disease attacking their crops. They should have noticed that when they planted many different species all intermingled with each other, they had better totall crop survival. When biodiversity is low, a single infected plant can spread the disease very quickly through an entire field. Hopefully they learned that saving species is not only good because they are pretty, but because having a variety of living things protects everything else from disease.

We've also started talking about extinction, both in the past and in the present. Students will continue to work on their zoo project over the next few weeks as well.

Happy Spring Break Everyone! See you on Tuesday!!!

End of Quarter Stuff

We finished our unit on plate tectonics a few weeks ago. Recently we've been talking about the abiotic and biotic factors that affect ecosystems. Students learned that abiotic factors are things that are non-living (i.e. water, topography, pH, sunlight, temperature, wind, space, etc.). Biotic factors are living things (i.e. bacteria, plants, decomposers, predators, prey, etc.). They interact in a variety of ways. For example, an overpopulation of cows grazing in a grassland causes the plants to die, the roots to shrivel, and for erosion of the soil to occur.

Next week we will be talking about extinctions, and students will be designing their own zoo enclosures as they research the different biomes and the requirements for different animals.

March 8-12: Tectonic Test & Abiotic/Biotic Factors

Students will be tested on the plate tectonic unit that we've been working on this Wednesday (March 10). Please help your students to study - ask them about the different types of boundaries, and how plate tectonics affects the other parts of Earth's system (for example, how do mountains affect the atmosphere, the biosphere, the hydrosphere, etc.). They also need to understand Wegener's theory of continental drift, the evidence for it, and how that theory has changed with increasing technology (we can actually see the tectonic plate boundaries from space!). This unit has come at a unique time of history where we've experienced some pretty serious earthquakes. Students should be able to explain to you what happened in the last Chile earthquake.

At the end of the week, we will move on to a new topic. Here at the end of the quarter we will be discussing ecology - and we'll start with biotic and abiotic factors that influence different ecosystems.

March 1-5: More on Plate Tectonics

Ironically, this week we will be discussing plate tectonics and the interactions of the plates that make up the crust of the Earth. Hopefully we will be able to tie in the recent events in Haiti and Chile to help students understand what is happening - and to show what an impact geology has on living things. Students will be working on pages 17, 18, and 19 in their notebooks this week. They will also be tested on this material sometime next week (just a heads up).

To look at plate dynamics, students will be making observations about where volcanoes and earthquakes are most common. They will also be doing an "Oreo Lab" to look at the different interactions of the plates.

I appreciate all of you who were able to come to student-led conferences, especially those who came to chat with me. Often students get into a 3rd quarter slump - please help them stay driven during these last few weeks of winter.

Feb 15-19: Presentations & layers of the Earth

As many of you parents probably know because you've had to help your kids, the students have been presenting PowerPoints that they have made about a marine animal of their choice. The most important part of the presentation was to realize what amazing adaptations animals have in order to live in the ocean environment (how they deal with salinity, cold temperatures, pressure, etc.). These are called abiotic factors (things that affect living organisms, but that are not alive - that's what abiotic means). Depending on how quickly students work through the presentations, some classes will start a small project on the layers of the Earth. They will make a foldable - a fun way to present information and keep it organized.

Feb. 8-12: Test & Marine Animal Research

Students took a test this week on water. It covered both freshwater properties and ocean properties (waves, tides, El Nino, etc.). For the last half of the week, students have been making PowerPoint presentations about an ocean animal. They had to give a description, a food chain, the adaptations the animal has to abiotic factors (non-living factors like temperature, water pressure, salinity, etc.), and they had to find 3 interesting facts that no one will already know about the animal. They will be presenting on Tuesday. Unfortunately, many of our mobile lab computers that students have been using and working on are pitifully slow and don't work very well. I will be emailing some of their projects to their personal email accounts so that they can finish their project over the weekend. Please help them email it back to me, or get it onto a flash drive. Thanks!

Sea Level Change Websites

Click on the links to go to the following websites to learn about sea level changes:

Map: pubs.usgs.gov/circ/c1075/images/sea.gif

NYC Article: www.oar.noaa.gov/spotlite/archive/spot_nycplanning.html

Arctic Indicators: www.arctic.noaa.gov/detect/index.shtml

Florida Coast: www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/research/other/climate_change_and_sea_level/sea_level_rise/florida/slr_usafl_a.htm

USA Coast:  www.geo.arizona.edu/dgesl/research/other/climate_change_and_sea_level/sea_level_rise/north_america/slr_north_america_a.htm

Jan. 25-29: Oceans

At the beginning of the week students worked on a large sea water lab where they learned about salinity, water pressure, and the formation of convection currents. For the latter half of the week we'll be doing formal notes on these sea water properties, and we will start talking about ocean dynamics (currents, tides, etc.). To look more closely at ocean currents, students will be doing an activity where they trace the path of some Nike shoes that were lost in the ocean in 1999 and are still circling the globe today because of these currents.

Students were given their Quarter 2 report cards this week, so you should be seeing them at home. They have also been given a new weekly check-in log for this class (bright green). Week 1 should be crossed out because I was too slow, so this is Week 2.

Jan. 18-22: Finish Freshwater

We're finishing our discussions about freshwater this week. We'll finish taking notes about the reservoirs where water is found here on Earth (atmosphere, groundwater, icecaps, and oceans), we'll do a mini-lab about the properties of water (cohesion, adhesion, and dissolving power), and we'll make up any work that was missed last week. I was sick last week, so here's what they should have done: made new notebooks, read and discussed water conservation possibilities, read and discussed about water quality indicators, and read articles about pollution found in our local area. LOTS of reading...sorry... but it's hard to come up with more active things for subsitutes to do with a class of students they don't know.

Speaking of substitutes... unfortunately, my three 9th grade classes gave the substitute the hardest time. Please remember how to behave when there is a guest in our room. I expect better in the future!