Today I dressed up like a “greaser” an wore my old biker jacket from high school, rolled up my jeans and rocked the white t-shirt.  The kids rotated between stations and in my class they filled up my back windows with awesome snowflakes cut out of paper.  They’ll be finishing the movie later today and heading out on break.

Today was our big CSA test for Chemical Building Blocks.  The test is pretty easy in comparison to some of the quizzes I gave so I’m expecting pretty good scores.  If they need to hand in anything that is past due, they need to do it soon.  I’d would love to not have to grade papers or check up on things over the break and I’m certainly not giving out work to do over the Holidays.  Tomorrow is Outsiders Day and they will be split into groups and cycle through other classes and projects, so we won’t be doing any science.

Today I was at a funeral so I had to get a couple of subs to cover for me.  The kids went to the computer lab to finish up their Prezis or finish up their review packet and study for the test today.

Today I handed back a lot of papers and projects that the kids have done over the last few weeks and got back their quizzes from Friday.  If they want to get some extra points, they can do the 8 page review packet I gave them for 1 point each page to be added to their score.  It may to seem like a lot, but it will help out that quiz grade.  IT will be due Wednesday before the test.  Also, if they wanted to work for 4 extra points they can go to www.teachersdomain.com and log in using my username: jarhedjimbo and my password: 71gibex.  If they search for “covalent bonds” they can go through the tutorial again and answer the 4 discussion questions on the site.  (I added the hot link to the covalent bonds page above)  It’s pretty straightforward and that will also help their quiz grade out.  Wednesday is the CSA and tomorrow I will be gone at a funeral.  They need to study hard!   Good luck.

Today we went over our Alien Periodic Table homework and then had a quiz.  The quiz was over ll of this week’s material including nonmetals, metalloids, covalent and ionic bonds.  We’ve done book work, worksheets, projects, seen videos and ran through two different tutorials on bonds where the kids were supposed to take notes.  I have spoken at length on these concepts all this week.  From the preliminary looks of the results, not very many students did very well.   I’m not sure what to make of their effort today, but I think they ignored my note taking instructions.  We’ll have to figure out a way to recoup some points before our CSA test next Wednesday.

After a review of nonmetal and metalloid properties, as well as covalent bonds, I did a little interactive on ionic bonds from Teacher’s Domain.  We started a project on the Alien Periodic Table which should be done tomorrow and we will have a quiz over this week’s material.  Study hard!  It will include a lot of stuff!

Today we went over the homework form yesterday and talked more about how to scrub carbon from our atmosphere.  We also watched a short video on a synthetic leaf invention created in part by a 12 year old girl!  After that we had a tutorial on covalent bonds and I assigned some homework on chemicals in our environment.

Today the kids have a homework assignment on where carbon can be put back in the environment after it’s used.  They also have to find out how scientist’s derive “position 11” in the position of oxygen in the cortisone structure.  Difficult stuff!

Today we got into nonmetals and metalloids a little deeper and finished up some of our element predictions from last Friday.  After we had a little review we got into carbon and it’s various forms.  I handed out a sheet with some information and review questions that is homework, as well as an additional assignment to draw the atomic structure of everyone’s favorite carbon based chemical, caffeine.  Tomorrow we’ll delve into the effects of carbon on our environment.

Today we reviewed our homework from yesterday and talked about their Prezi projects a little bit.  After that we had a great time predicting the 10 most abundant elements in the human body, the earth’s crust, the oceans, sun and the moon.  Lots of fun.  No homework over the weekend unless they aren’t done with their Prezi.