Alfred Wegener Movie

Watch this short movie about Alfred Wegener and his continental drift hypothesis (follow along with worksheet in notebook:

(Sorry... there are a few short commercials)

Student Led Conferences

Third Quarter Student Led Conferences (SLC) are coming up on March 1 & 2. Make sure you know what time you're coming to meet with your student in their TA class.

Thanks for your support for this program.

Feb 21-25: Ocean Organism Research

We've been working on a big project for most of this week:

Monday - Life: Fish movie as an introduction to adaptation and symbiosis
Tuesday - Thursday - Research in the computer lab. Students were given one of 4 possible projects. Two of the projects focus on ocean adaptations (some will create their own fish species that will be adapted to future ocean climates & some will create 4 food webs of organisms living in different ocean habitats). The other two projects focus on symbiotic relationships (some will create 3 imaginary symbiotic pairs of ocean organisms, and some will create a children's storybook explaining a symbiotic relationship). The research for this project was completed by Thursday and will be presented at student led conferences. The actual product (species, food webs, pairs, or storybook) will be made next week.
Friday - Ocean dynamics quiz

Ocean Level Changes Websites

These are the links for the Ocean Level Changes Webquest:

1. Map of East Coast
2. Climate Variability and Change and New York City Planning for the Future
3. Arctic Change
4. Sea Level Rise Animation in Google Earth






5. Cretaceous Paleogeography, Southwestern US

Feb 14-18: Ocean depth, tempertature, El Nino, & Ocean Level Changes

We're wrapping up the properties of the oceans this week with the following activities:

Monday & Tuesday - Continue pg 11 notes - Ocean depth, temperature, etc.
Wednesday - El Nino (p13 - brief over view of what El Nino is, how it affects currents, and global weather patterns.)
Thursday & Friday - Ocean Level Changes (p15 - students use several sites on the internet to look at how ocean levels have changed over time - especially how they may be currently changing, and the problems that could cause).

Feb 7-11: Sea Water Lab, Waves, Currents, & Salinity

We've moved on to oceans! Freshwater is still important of course, but now we'll focus on where the majority of the Earth's water resides - in salty oceans.

Monday - Sea Water Lab (p10 - students looked at various properties of the ocean that we can simulate in the lab: density of salt water, convection currents, how waves move, water pressure, etc.)
Tuesday - Discuss lab & take fresh water review quiz
Wednesday - Ocean dynamics & properties notes (p11 & 12). We got through waves & started talking about currents.
Thursday - Global Ocean Currents Map (p12 - colored and labeled the major ocean currents and their temperatures, discussing why they go the direction they do and why there are the temperature they are...)
Friday - pg 11 notes continued. We talked about salinity (salt water is more dense than fresh water - animals must be adapted to living in both fresh and salt water because of osmosis).

Jan 31- Feb 4: Finsh Fresh Water Unit

We finished up our unit on fresh water this week, including a fun experiment on local water quality.

Monday - News article review of pollution examples in Salt Lake City 
Tuesday & Wednesday- Water quality lab (students collected water samples from around town and tested them for various things: nitrate, ammonia, pH, copper, etc.)
Thursday - Finish & present water use brochures
Friday - Go over stations for Monday's lab & work on water budget homework.

Jan 24-28: Chemical Dumping & Water-Use Brochures

We focused on more fresh water problems this week.

Monday & Tuesday - Midnight Chemical Dumping (p8 - students are investigating the source for chemicals that have gotten into the ground water).
Wednesday - Begin long-term water use plan for a preposed city. (Come up with solutions to water problems like salinity, pollution, drought, etc.)
Thursday - Fresh water Planet Earth movie guide (I was in meetings all day).
Friday - Work on Brochures for water use plans

Jan 19-21: Reservoirs

I love short weeks - more than the students do, I think... Even though it's a short week, here's what we've done/ are doing/ will do.

Monday & Tuesday - NO SCHOOL!!!
Wednesday & Thursday - Water notes (p6) - what are the global and local reservoirs for water? How much water is fresh and could be drinkable for humans? How does the sun affect the movement of water in and out of the reservoirs?
Thursday - Continue Notes and take a short water quiz (water cycle, water properties, and reservoirs).
Friday - Correct quizzes & notebooks.

Friday will be our Freshmen Celebration Day during 6th and 7th periods. This is our opportunity as teachers to thank your students for all their hard work this last quarter. We will be playing lots of games and having a grand ol' time. Thanks for your support and encouragement. We hope that students who may have struggled at the end of the quarter will step it up this quarter - never to fall behind again!

Jan 10-14: Water Cycle & Properties!

We're finished with weather (not that the weather is ever finished...). We will be discussing a related topic though - water! This week we'll review the water cycle (they've known it since elementary school, I know... but we get to do it again with more detail and more emphasis on energy and pollution). We'll also be playing with water to determine some of water's unique properties that make it important for life and important to protect.

Monday - Take out important notes from the last unit, and get new pages for the water unit. Start review of the water cycle with "The Magic School Bus" (we really are going back to elementary school!) Students drew everywhere the kids went and added the scientific terms for the processes they saw (pg5 front).

Tuesday - Water properties lab (pg5 back). Students were given materials to play with in order to learn as much as they could about water.

Wednesday - Finished the written portions of page 5. For the water properties, students should be able to explain: cohesion, adhesion, the repulsion of water and oil, and that water is the universal solvent. For the water cycle, they should understand evaporation, condensation, precipitation, runoff, infiltration, and collection.

Thursday - Aquifer lab (p7). Students will model how aquifers store water, how water is drawn into a well, and how pollution in our well water can be around for a very long time.

Friday - Finish lab questions if necessary (p7). Start water reservoir notes - p6. Students will understand the various reservoirs for water on our planet and will have a general understanding of how much of the Earth's water is in each type of reservoir (97% in the ocean... that doesn't leave us much to drink!)

School will not be held Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and we will not have school Tuesday either for teacher-grade-putter-inner day (I'm sure there's a more technical term, but this what ya get). We'll pick up again on Wednesday!