7th grade Evolution and Adaptation Unit

You guys did a fabulous job with your creature features! This style of testing was similar to the type we did in the body system unit...remember the booklets and travel brochures? You did an awesome job on those, so I wanted to give you another opportunity to use a project as a means to show what you learned. I think you did a wonderful job interpreting genetic combinations to determine traits. You also showed creativity, imagination, and a great deal of knowledge with the construction of your creature and the oral presentation. We are now ready to move into our next unit of evolution and adaptation. This will not be a long unit, I am hoping to get through this information in a couple of weeks. We will be taking a virtual field trip to the Galapagos Islands online. I hope this project proves to be a fun learning experience for this unit. Check out the web sources below to find out more about evolution and adaptation.

http://www.blupete.com/Literature/Biographies/Science/Darwin.htm

http://www.darwins-theory-of-evolution.com/

http://www.galapagos.org/

http://www.rit.edu/~rhrsbi/GalapagosPages/AboutGalapagos.html

http://www.pbs.org/safarchive/5_cool/galapagos/g1_welcome.html

8th grade- Weather Unit

Hi guys! We have finally completed our volcano unit. You did a great job planning, constructing and erupting your volcano models. It was great to watch you put into action and displaying what you learned in class. I hope this was a rewarding learning experience for you. I would love to hear your feedback about this activity and how it helped you learn. Let me know how you felt about a project based assessment vs. a written test style of assessment.

We are now ready to begin our weather unit. We are going to begin our unit by learning some of the basic fundamentals regarding weather. I will do another project based assessment for this unit as well. We will be given periodic quizzes to check for learning but your final test grade will be the information you gather from your own homemade weather station. As we progress into the unit we are going to make instruments that help measure various aspects of weather such as wind direction, temperature, barometric pressure, etc. We will be constructing our own mini weather stations! Using our weather stations we will monitor and record weather patterns. It sounds like a great learning experience, but I will need your help, cooperation and best behavior during this unit. We will be spending a lot of time outside observing the weather. If you are not on task and doing what is asked of you outside and over the course of this unit, we will not be able continue this unit doing hands on activities. Let's give this unit our BEST is all aspects, and really get the most out of this learning experience that we can! I know you can do it. Ok, I will quit preaching and get to the part that I know you are waiting for- Here are the links to some fun and informative weather sites I have found on the internet. If you happen to come across some great sites about weather post the web address in your comments to me and I will post them here for all of us to share and enjoy! Learning is fun! Let's begin having some fun learning about weather!

http://www.weather.com/

http://kids.earth.nasa.gov/archive/air_pressure/index.html

http://www.miamisci.org/hurricane/airpressure.html

http://www.ametsoc.org/amsedu/dstreme/extras/wxsym2.htm

http://ww2010.atmos.uiuc.edu/(Gh)/guides/maps/sfcobs/home.rxml

http://www.meteor.wisc.edu/~hopkins/aos100/sfc-anl.htm

http://www.wxdude.com/

http://www.wildwildweather.com/

http://eo.ucar.edu/webweather/

http://www.cloudsrus.com/

Here is some more fun stuff for you guys-- Remember to collect craft items to begin making your creature when we get back from Spring Break!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/baby/divide.html#

http://www.nature.ca/genome/05/051/0511/0511_m205_e.cfm

http://www.nature.ca/genome/04/0413_e.cfm

http://www.vilenski.org/science/notebook/unit2/index.html

Private Posts!!

If you want a post to be private, then be sure the word PRIVATE is the very first word in your comment posting. You may also email anything of a private nature to my email account at school.

Volcano Eruption Pictures

http://www.livescience.com/php/multimedia/imagegallery/igviewer.php?imgid=128&gid=11&index=0

http://www.arenal.net/arenal-volcano.htm

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/gallery/kilauea/volcanomovies/

Monohybrid cross Practice

http://www.biology.arizona.edu/mendelian_genetics/problem_sets/monohybrid_cross/monohybrid_cross.html

8th grade - more volcano stuff

http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngkids/0106/volcano/

http://www.softschools.com/science/earth/games/wordscramble20.html

http://education.jlab.org/vocabhangman/

erupt your own volcano-----http://kids.discovery.com/games/pompeii/pompeii.html

http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/ice/

Genetics Vocaublary Games

http://www.quia.com/jg/65753.html

Vocabulary Hangman-
http://education.jlab.org/vocabhangman/

Genetics Games

Below is the link for Mitosis and Meiosis activity
http://www.biologyinmotion.com/cell_division/

Information on Mitosis: Cell control center Game
http://nobelprize.org/medicine/educational/2001/

Here are some sites to practice phenotype, Genotype and Punnett squares.
http://www2.edc.org/weblabs/Punnett/punnettsquares.html

http://library.thinkquest.org/17109/game.htm

http://genetics.gsk.com/kids/heredity01.htm

http://www.execulink.com/~ekimmel/mendel1a.htm

More practice with Punnett Squares and Vocabulary

http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/be1.shtml

8th Grade Volcanoes

Here are some additional volcanoe sites for you to explore:

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Outreach/FunStuff/framework.html

http://content.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=1671


My favorite!
http://www.billnye.com/

coming up next time---building volcanoes---here is a preview:
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/volc_models/shield.html

More 7th grade fun sites!!

Here are some additional websites you can go to:

http://science4kids.com/solvethecase.htm

http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/projects/anthro201/exper/

This is a review of Punnett Squares:
http://curriculum.calstatela.edu/courses/builders/lessons/less/les4/casino/cas1ck.html

http://www2.edc.org/weblabs/Punnett/punnettsquares.html

My Favorite!!!
http://www.billnye.com/

8th grade Volcanoes!

games and other volcano information
http://library.thinkquest.org/17457/volcanoes/

a virtual field trip---get a 360 degree look at Mt. St. Helen
http://volcano.und.nodak.edu/vwdocs/kids/vrtrips.html

The volcano page---- http://volcano.und.edu/

Genetics, Cloning and Heredity games on line

This looked like it had some fun and interesting games on it. Pass the gene looks good. Check this out and tell me what you think.

http://nature.ca/genome/04/041/041_e.cfm

Sylvester's Science Superstars

Hi to all of my great and wonderful Science students!

The intention of this blog is to have a place to go outside of school to seek help on the science material we are studying in class. You may ask me (or anyone else in our class) a question, you may post a comment, write your thoughts, maybe even give me some directions as to how I can make this course and learning more fun for you (no, free days everyday are NOT an option). This forum is basically here for you, to help you in any area of class that I am able. All I ask is that everything that is posted within this blog is G and PG rated. If I do receive inappropriate comments, I will erase them and block you, so lets be wise about what you write. So here we go...

7th grade: We are studying genetics and heredity. Besides the generic "it's boring" what are your thoughts and comments about this unit? Do you understand the material? What is easy for you? What is not coming so easy for you? When I have more time I will find some fun websites that you can log onto, to practice Punnett squares, and play some genetics games. Fun, fun, I know, but if you are looking for some other alternatives to learning, then this will help you. Besides when you are at home playing science games all by yourself, no one from school will ever know that deep down inside of you the true Science loving person in you is emerging....ok so I had to try~!!!

8th grade: We are studying volcanoes. This will not be a very long unit, and you have a really fun activity for this unit. You get to plan, make and erupt a volcano how ever you would like. You will be working in groups on this project You will be planning and drawing the plans for your model. You will submit a rough draft to me for project approval. We will gather the materials and make volcanoes. This project will be your test grade for this unit......so get those idea juices flowing!!! Feel free to submit your thoughts about class here too. Just be sure to identify yourself as an 8th grader so I know which classes we are talking about. Just like with the 7th graders, I will find some cool volcano sites for you to log into and check out.

Let's get started with this and post some of your ideas here!!!! Be good, be safe and make good decisions!!!