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