Back in action

Either I have jumped through time, or I've been a sleep for 4 months. Goodness, how the time passes. I can't believe it's already mid-January!

I survived the first half of the year!

Terribly sorry for not updating. Between Drill Team and Science UIL, my life was not my own for a solid 3 months. But after a refreshing winter holiday, I'm back and have at least a little more free time.

In the interim, my class covered physical/chemical changes in digestion, Force and Motion, Earth Systems (natural disasters, ecoregions, watersheds), and Space.

We started back on the 6^th with Organisms and their Environment. Biomes, touching on adaptations, Biotic/abiotic factors, and Succession. Here's an overview of this unit so far.

WEEK 17

1/6
Ecology Vocabulary.
Biome, Habitat, Microhabitat (Niche), Abiotic Factor, Biotic Factor, Limiting Factor, Adaptation, Succession, Taxonomy, Climax Community, Biodiversity

1/7
We took notes on the names we give different areas of land. Biome, ecosystem, habitat, microhabitat/niche.

1/8
Students went to the lab stations to do research on the first 3 land Biomes (Tundra, Taiga, Grasslands). I put out info cards, and the students rotated between the 3 stations to fill in their data card. When they were done, we discussed the climate of each Biome and where they were located on Earth.

1/9
Students researched the other 3 land Biomes (Desert, Tropical forest, Temperate forest).

WEEK 18
1/12
Students did the same as last week, and researched the Aquatic Biomes. We did Salt, Fresh, and Estuaries. We created a giant concept map to tie all of the biomes together.

1/13
My kids took their vocabulary quiz. I was surprised how poorly many of them did. I'd been very careful to use the entire first half of our vocab list and even reviewed with them right before the quiz on the words we hadn't relly talked about yet. I think it's partially because we just came back from the break, and partially because we're getting into the harder, less well known words now. After, my kids finished up some of the Lesson Reviews from their book.

We also completed this Biome map sheet and taped it into our journals. I pulled this out of an old Science Explorer book I found lingering in my dusty old closet.

1/14
Adaptations day. Because adaptations is in another unit, I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time on it right now, but I felt that it would really help them distinguish between Biomes if we talked about the adaptations of animal TO THOSE biomes. We did Innate and Learned behavioral as well as structural.

I started off class with a matching game. The kids matched the animals to their adaptations. We took our notes, and watched a few videos. Available for free here: Adaptation Cards

The kids absolutely LOVED the spider and bird videos. They were fascinated and practically rolling on the floor at the dancing spider. It was a great day in Ms. Kat's Science Class.
Dancing Spiders
Birds of Paradise

1/15
We did a lab on Biodiversity. I used a lab setup I found online and modified it a bit to better suit our purposes. Here's the site for the original idea.

I set up 6 boxes, one for each land biome. I already had a bucket of centimeter cubes out and separated into baggies by color, so I used those to represent our organisms. I divided up the cubes into the boxes and labeled them. The kids rotated between stations and found the number of species (number of colors), and the number of individuals (total cubes). They then divided species by individuals to get the biodiversity index.

Here's the site I got the idea from Biodiversity lab

After, we discussed why biodiversity is important. How ecosystems that are more biodiverse are more stable, and can recover more easily than those that are less biodiverse.

1/16

We took some notes on primary succession. The kids made a small comic strip illustrating the various stages in Primary Succession.

I was in a very Frozen mood (there was in fact Ice on my car that morning) and I actually started singing “Do you wanna build a snowman” except I changed the words. Do you wanna build an ecosystem wasn't nearly amusing enough to them. I think I'm going to have to write the whole song and sing it for them next year.

We also devoted a good 20 minutes to putting together our Science Journals. We kind of slacked on them last year, so I'm making up for it this year. 2 weeks in and we already have 7 papers taped in (between notes, labs, vocab, and diagrams).

This coming week looks rather boring by comparison.

1/19
Teacher work day

1/20
Secondary Succession

1/21

Succession Lab. Students draw a modern ecosystem used by humans. They then pretend humans abandoned that area and follow it through the stages of secondary succession. I pulled this from our Fusion Lab Manual.

1/22

Ecology Unit Review
I put together a slideshow with questions and answers. I'm going to attempt to have us play a game I read about online. I just never felt like our smartboard review games were engaging enough for all students at the same time. I had tried using a board game during the Earth Systems unit (they didn't finish the game, not enough time) and I also tried Kahoot (turns out our computer lab doesnt have a projector so I had to read the questions and answers to them. Gave up on that really quick).

This game is a little more competitive and inclusive.

Students get into groups (I 'm going to try groups of 3). On the board, each group starts out with 10 x's. Group 1 gets a question and they may work together to decide on an answer. They have 15 seconds. If they get it right, they get to steal an X from another group. If they get it wrong, group 2 has an option to steal the question.

Any group that gets a question right has the opportunity to shoot a basket. If they make the basket, they get to steal another X from any group.

1/23
Ecology Unit Test!

That's all for now. If you'll excuse me, I have to go plan our Fetal Pig Dissection. The kids aren't nearly as excited about it as I am!