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.