Well, after five days of being extraordinarily busy at the Junior Olympic Men’s Gymnastics Championships, I’m back.  Today we reviewed what went on last week, we checked our quizzes, started section 3.3 in the text on biodiversity and then watched a little more of Secrets beneath the ice on Nova/PBS.  I’ll be playing a little catch up for a couple of days, but the kids seemed to like Mr. Rhodes for a sub.  That’s always nice to hear.

Today we handed back some papers that I’ve put into the gradebook, and then we went through an interactive on Nova/PBS on Global Dimming.  We took notes and talked about the beginnings of climate science with it, and then I introduced a video called “Secrets Beneath the Ice” on Antarctica and the ANDRILL project.  Good stuff for next week.  Also, I was stunned to hear that none of the kids have seen An Inconvenient Truth!

Today we did  a little prediction with the plants we grew in class.  We set out three different tubs of plant life grown is specific biomes and then compared their growth and structures and how they responded to each biome.  It was a cool little exercise.  After that I went through a very informative and exhaustive Powerpoint on World Biomes from this site: World Biomes

Not much done today except our awesome 7th grade concerts and a  little review of what we did yesterday.  Next week we’ll hit it hard and heavy again.

Wow.  Today I introduced what I though would be an easy assignment, which turned out to be much more difficult to explain.  I’m asking the kids to create a temperature and precipitation chart for each of the 6 biomes and then identify 10 elements found in each biome such as geographic locations, organisms, temp ranges, precipitation ranges, etc.  On the charts themselves, I DO NOT WANT EXACT DATA PLOTS.  I want a general picture of what the temperature and precipitation would look like for a geographic region.  For instance, in Nebraska (a grassland) the chart would have an elevation of temp in the summer months and an elevation of precipitation in the spring months.  It’s that easy.  Here is a chart that has all the precipitation levels.  Each biome chart should only have two lines on it; temp and precipitation.

Today we started in on Biomes in Chapter 2.4 of the text.  We also talked more aobut their invasive species project as well as watched  a little more on the Burmese Python problem in Florida.

Today we reviewed the guided reading on section 2.3 in the text and started in on invasive species.  I introduced an assignment due Friday, which the kids will have to research on their own, due to the NESA testing in the computer labs here at school.  It involves going to www.invasive.org and picking a species of organism to research.  We also started watching a cool video on the Burmese Python problem in Florida.

Here are the things they need to include in their project.  It can be a paper, a Powerpoint, a Prezi or a poster, and they can send it to me electronically if they want to.  I would even love to see a creative video!

What is it?

It’s taxonomy

Where is it now found?

How did it get there?

Where did it come from?

Why is it a problem (if it is one)?

What impact does it have on the ecosystem?

What steps are taken to deal with it?

Include a picture of it.

Today we started chapter  2.3 in the text on Biogeography, worked through the guided reading and got all the way to the end.  I showed a couple of short videos on the Darwin Stag beetle and the Sarcastic Fringe Head fish.  The Fringe Head was the inspiration for the alien warrior in the  Predator movies!  These kids love the weird stuff!

Quiz over section 2.1, Carbon Footprint and a little Earth Day.

Today we talked a little more about global energy sustainability and our carbon footprint as it relates to different countries around the world.  All the kids should understand this for this for the quiz tomorrow.  We also did a quick owl pellet lab today where I asked them to dissect a pellet, list and describe what they find and place them in the appropriate “consumer level” as on page 46 in the text.  They made a mess, but had fun.  I wish we could spend more time doing this kind of stuff instead of redirecting the aberrant talkers in class.