Today I handed back some quizzes and lab reports.  I was disappointed with some of the writing I found in the reports, so I spent today reviewing material from the quiz, creating a chart of information to use as a background and illustrated how I want things written in class and in assignments.  I’m trying to develop the science writing skill as well as provide curricular information.  These skills will help to prepare my students for the rest of the year as well as further into their educational careers.  If they didn’t get the assignment completed in class, it’s homework.  I expect it to be in their science notebook.

We went through a little seating rearrangement in class today and the entire point is to keep kids being successful in class.  We also went through the guided reading to make sure everyone is on the same page with the material.  Our Inside Earth Quiz #6 was taken today and it seemed like everyone had reservations about their ability to draw the fault line formations.  We’ll work on this more later.  Remember to work on your Earthquake house project!

Tomorrow we’re going to have a quiz over the first section of chapter 2, so today we worked on drawing the three types of stress in the Earth’s crust, the landforms that occur at each one and the name and definitions associated with each.  They will be expected to know all of this in some form on the quiz.  We are nearing the end of the quarter next week and I’d like to stay on target.  Their earthquake house projects should be sketched out and handed in tomorrow with the names of their partners or team members.

We did some administrative things in class before we set out for the computer lab to work on the Prezi project.  Some are complete and some need more time, but everyone should be working to finalize their Prezis.  This means that if they aren’t done, they need to carve out some time at home to focus on it at home or after school in the library.  It is paramount that they get it done this next week.  Also, we’ve had a few students figuring out how to log onto Youtube to add videos.  This doesn’t bother me as long as they can stay productive and electronically responsible.  I would prefer that they browse Youtube at home where parents can monitor.

Today we talked about their projects and I clarified some things for them.  They seem to want to cheat as much as possible.  No, they can’t use sheets of plywood, anything edible besides marshmallows, dowels, legos, 2 x 4’s, Plaster of Paris, and they shouldn’t try and build furniture for the house or try to add landscaping.  Goofy kids.

We watched some more of the Nova/PBS video and they have a word search and a concept map completion as homework if they didn’t get it done in class.

There will be a “Seismic Event” in my classroom on October 14th.  Because of this, the students are tasked with building an earthquake proof house and bringing it into class that day.  The rules were explained to them and they were given a packet of the instructions for the project.  The acceptable materials are: modeling clay, paper clips, straws, cotton, tape, glue, toothpicks, paper, fabric, card stock, cardboard, pipe cleaners and styrofoam.  I’ve outlawed the use of legos, popsicle sticks, tongue depressors, Lincoln Logs, rocks, dowels and plywood as a means by which to challenge our builders.  On the 14th, we’ll bring the buildings together and create our own seismic event and see who’s team has constructed the most earthquake proof building.  They can work alone or in a group up to 4 members and they can use whatever materials they want form the list above.  Their building can be houe-like or not, but it must have space inside and it must be at least two stories and small enough to fit on a piece of 8 1/2″x 11″ paper.

The guided reading I gave them today is homework, and we will be viewing a great Nova video this week on earthquakes (http://video.pbs.org/video/1690329036/) as well as working through the book.

Super hard chapter 1 test today.  They kids and I had a frank discussion about behaviors and expectations and I think it went well.  They will hopefully heed my warnings about aberrant behaviors and  we’ll have much less class time devoted to redirecting them back to the lesson.  They have some interesting perspectives on BIST and how it works.

There were just a few who didn’t get the test completed in class and will have to finish it on Monday, against my better judgement.

Today didn’t go as planned.  I wanted to watch a fun video on Mythbusters and use it to predict an outcome and spend the rest of the time reviewing for our big chapter test tomorrow, however I spent a huge amount of time redirecting behaviors.  I will be revisiting the BIST goals in class and tightening up the behavior issues in class.  Most of the kids are wonderful most of the time, but there are FAR too many instances of blurting out and ignoring directions.  Study hard tonight, the big test happens tomorrow.

We spent the day in the computer lab working toward the completion of our Prezis for the first chapter.  I gave the kids a list of things to finish (the same one from the blog post a few weeks ago) and they should be finishing it up withing this week.  Next Wednesday we will revisit the lab to (hopefully) wrap up this section so we can move forward with new material.  They are showing a certain amount of innovation with the Prezi program and using old skills to add new life to their work.  They enjoy the soundboards and are trying to figure out how to add sounds to their path.  We’re not sure if it will all work yet, but it’s good to see them thinking outside the box.

I still think the classes get chatty to fast and their volume can really escalate.

Today we finished our lab report, worked on a review for the chapter test, and started a guided reading for the last section of the chapter.  We also caught up on some missing work that the students had.   It was a good day to hand back papers and fill in the grade book where it was needed.  The review for the test is homework if they didn’t finish it in class.  Tomorrow we hit the computer lab.