Tuesday/Wednesday, December 9/10, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: ALLISON PER. 2

Today in our science class we did an experiment called Activity 39, "Cells Alive!'. This experiment used yeast to show us how respiration occurs.

Yeast is a single celled fungus that will make energy using sugar, which we added in the lab.

We started off with reviewing our homework and checking the homework for the night before. Then we jumped straight into the lab and we did preparations. (Procedures are all posted on Mrs.McCabes website and in the SALLY book on page c-43.) 

The experiment was testing whether yeast is a cellular organism that has the ability to respire. We were using BTB to test for the presence of CO2 gas, which turns from blue to yellow when it's present.

While we waited for our results, we took notes on cellular respiration watching this video, then we observed the final outcome of our experiment. We filled out the chart on page 20 in our science notebook. We did the analysis questions and did the activity 39 vocabulary which is also on Mrs. McCabes website. That is all we did today in science.

Monday, December 8, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Jessica from Period 3

Today in class, all the students traveled to the media center to complete the "Hour of Code" which teaches kids how to write computer code as it becomes more and more evident in our everyday lives.

Students got to either use the games posted on code.org or code using Scratch for the single period.

Thursday/Friday, December 4/5, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Stephanie from Period 4

After spending 10 minutes on vocabulary, we watched a video about how diseases spread by watching, "How do Pandemics Spread?"

We then started playing the role of an epidemiologist in Activity 32, "Who Infected Whom" by learning about how a disease is spread and the role that carriers like Typhoid Mary play in infection. Students were given a scenario of an imaginary outbreak at a middle school, and given information collected through interviews to try and create a disease web to figure out how the infection spread.Here we got to collaborate with our tablemates and got to try to solve a mission on who infected whom. 

Students then were able to test to see which of the people in their web who didn't have symptoms were carriers of the disease.

For Activity 33 we made a Venn diagram to show some similarities and differences between carriers and vectors like the fleas that spread the black plague in the video we watched as homework
.
Then we finalized our class with watching a video of doctors and nurses who took care of one of the injured people from Ebola and there experience.

"I got myself together. I'd done what I needed to get myself prepared mentally, emotionally, and physically, and went in there and did what I was supposed to."

This was a quote that a nurse who cured for the patient stated. She was scared, but did her job with her heart.

Tuesday/Wednesday, December 2/3, 2014

As promised, students got to change seats today and meet their new table group members for Unit C. We then wrapped up the remaining boxes from Activity 31 we had started during the previous class, and then started Activity 31, Who Infected Whom?

Signs were hung around the room that students chose from to visit during their "3 days" of the Activity. After getting their "fluid samples", students wandered from location to location, exchanging fluids with other students at the same sites. We then tested their samples to see how the infection spread.

After tallying the spread of the disease from day to day, we graphed our class data and predicted how the graph might change over time.

We compared the graph we created in our simulation to real data provided on this website by the New York Times about the Ebola outbreak and noticed that our graphs were similar. We then completed the Analysis Questions.

Monday, December , 2014

After an awesome week off, we reconvened and started our new Unit C on MicroLife. We got motivated by watching this TED Talk by Virus Hunter, Nathan Wolfe.

Next we completed Activity 31 which involved taking some notes on the difference between infectious and noninfectious diseases. Then we did a quick info exchange by trying to guess which diseases in the boxes underneath the notes were infectious and noninfectious. After we reviewed most of the diseases (we stopped at Ebola), we watched this segment of the news show, "60 Minutes", about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-ebola-hot-zone-liberia/

Thursday/Friday, November 20/21, 2014

UNIT B TEST DAY!

Today we wrapped up Unit B by turning in the Unit B Stamp Sheets for the Unit B Notebook Check (worth 180 points) and taking the Unit B Test in the Computer Lab. After students finished their Unit B Tests, they had time to work on their Unit B ePortfolios which will be due on Monday, December 8.

Tuesday/Wednesday, November 18/19, 2014

We used the first 20 minutes of class to finish Concept Mapping with our groups.  Our concept map was to have between 20-25 words on it from the Unit B vocab.

Next we worked on Activity 23 by reading and doing the Stopping to Think questions as well as the Analysis questions.

Finally, we did a Kahoot to review for the test and also had time in some classes to watch student made Instructional Videos for Unit B.

Monday, November 17, 2014

Today was a Late Start Day. First, we watched Bill Nye "Heart" while Mrs. McCabe stamped Unit B vocabulary pages 3-5.

Next we started Concept Mapping the Unit B vocabulary words. We will finish this next block to review for the test at the end of the week.

Thursday/Friday, November 13/14, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Jasmine from Period 4

Today in science, we got our Activity 27 index cards back, and then watched a video about how alveoli and capillaries in the lungs interact to help students with rewrites. Then we had twenty minutes to work on vocabulary since all of it is due on Monday.

Next, we did activity #22 where we took our pulse and experienced what our heart did by pumping blood with our hands using the pressure bulb (the black one). 

We kept squeezing the bulb with only one hand for one minute to see if we could match up with what our heart can do in one minute. It was hard!

Afterwards, we finished up activity #23 by doing the analysis questions.

Video of a Complete Heart Transplant!

From IFL Science: Heart disease is the number one cause of death around the globe. While approximately 50,000 people are candidates for transplants, only about 5,000 are performed each year. 

The first heart transplant surgery was in 1967 in Cape Town, South Africa. After a 25-year-old woman died in a car accident, her heart was given to a 55-year-old man. Unfortunately, the man died only 18 days later. Rejection was common in early surgeries with most patients not lasting more than a couple of weeks, so not many were performed. In the coming decades, meticulous tissue-matching and improved medications increased survival rates.

Today, recipients of donated hearts have a survival rate of 90% after one year and 74% after five years. As research involving replacement organs from stem cells continues to progress, those numbers will hopefully increase.

Potential recipients undergo psychological evaluation for the surgery and they are also given a variety of tests regarding tissue type and to make sure they are healthy enough to sustain the new organ. Once a donor heart becomes available, recipient selection based on a number of factors, including time on wait list, prognosis, and proximity to the available donor organ.

When everyone is ready to proceed with the transplant, the recipient is put under general anesthesia and connected to a cardiopulmonary bypass machine. After the blood has been completely diverted from the heart, the old heart is extracted and replaced with the donor organ. After the new heart is sewn into place and the blood is brought back to the heart, the heart will be shocked into beating. Before they close up, the surgeon will monitor the heart is functioning properly without any leaks. 

Quite obviously, the following video that shows this process is graphic, yet totally amazing. I mean, you’re watching someone’s heart get cut right out of their chest, so please view with discretion. 

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Malia from Period 4

Today, in class we worked on Activity 21, where we had to see which type of pump moves water the best. So we conducted an experiment where we had to get a bucket of water and see which pump, the black......

or the blue.....

moved the water into the empty bucket the best. 

The whole class agreed that the black pump moved the best because it trapped the water on one side when you squeezed it, and when you squeezed it again then it let the water out on the other side to the dry and empty bucket. We took turns and saw that the blue pump just takes the water and then when you let go of the pump, it releases the water back into the same bucket where the water originally came from. 

After we did that for 14 minutes in total (7 minutes for each pump) we talked in class and wrote down what we observed on pg. 26. Finally, we had a towel to soak up the water that got on the table and cleaned up.

Thursday/Friday, November 6/7, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Helen from Period 4

Today in science, we wrote an index card for Activity 17 Analysis Question 3 and Ms.McCabe stamped tables 1, 2, 3, and 4’s what is surface area, surface area notes, Super Size Me, activity 15, and activity 17. She will be stamping the rest of the class next class. 

We got our old index cards back and discussed them. After that, we played the circulatory game (activity 18). We each got handed a role to play (blood, heart, liver, lungs, stomach and intestines, kidneys, or leg muscles). We then collected the waste, nutrients, oxygen, and carbon dioxide cards needed. Every job has a special function to do to keep the body alive. If an organ ran out of something, it died. 

During the first round every organ died fairly quickly. 

The second time we changed somethings to make the body more effective and “alive” for a longer period of time. After the activity, we discussed what we learned by filling in Part 2 of Activity 18 and the analysis questions.

Tuesday, November 4 & Wednesday, November 5, 2014

After we wrote down our homework in our agenda, we studied for the vocab quiz while Mrs. McCabe stamped page 2 of vocab. Then we took the vocab test.

Next, we watched this video of an experiment done to show the impact of smoking on lungs (pig lungs were used), and then we finished Activity 17 by reviewing the data we collected Monday and completing the second table and analysis questions.

Finally, we read an article called "Teens, Tech and Trends Article" and completed an Analysis worksheet to help us identify the author's claim and evidence of her argument. This worksheet and the one we did last unit entitled "Driven to Distraction" will eventually be used to formulate an argument in an assignment about whether technology helps teens learn.

Watch The European Space Agency Land A Spacecraft On A Comet!!

(from IFL science): The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft has had quite a remarkable journey since it was launched in 2004. After traveling throughout the solar system for a decade, Rosetta finally met up with its target, Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, in August. In the time that has followed since, Rosetta has been observing the comet and preparing to launch Philae: a 100 kg (220 lb) robotic lander that will be the first human instrument to make a soft landing on a comet’s nucleus. This historic event has been scheduled for November 12.

Rosetta will launch Philae early Wednesday morning. It will take a gut-wrenching seven hours for the lander to travel 22.5 km to 67P/C-G and land at Agilkia, the targeted area on the head of the comet’s nucleus. After Philae lands, it will deploy harpoons that will hold it securely to the comet’s surface. Next, it will make observations and get oriented before sending the information back to the Rosetta orbiter, which will then be relayed back to Earth. It takes nearly half an hour for information to be received from Rosetta, so confirmation of the lander’s success is expected to come in around 11:00 am EST.

Philae contains a suite of ten instruments that will sample the nucleus, generating a great deal of data about its composition and structure. The data could reveal what role comets may have played in the presence of water on Earth, as well as any influence comets may have had on early life.

Slooh Community Observatory will be doing a live webcast discussing Philae’s landing beginning at 2:00 pm EST on November 12. The event will be hosted by Slooh astronomer Bob Berman alongside Geoff Fox, in addition to many guests, including ESA scientists from the Rosetta mission. Use #SloohRosetta on social media to join in the conversation.

The comet is extremely dim and will not be visible with amateur telescopes even when it nears the sun next August. Slooh’s observatory in the Canary Islands will be providing real-time footage of 67P/C-G during the webcast.

“This is the most exciting spacecraft mission since Cassini reached Saturn a decade ago,” Berman said in a press release. “Comet 67P is heading toward its encounter with the Sun next summer, and as it does its ices will sublimate, pebbles and dust will be released -- some as dramatic geysers from the comet’s surface --, and now we have a spacecraft right there sending us pictures and videos of the whole thing. It’s unbelievable -- and this makes the attempted landing on its surface critically important, and nail-bitingly perilous.”

You can tune in to Slooh’s broadcast here: 

Monday, November 3, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Max from Period 4
Today, we started class by writing a notecard for Activity #15 analysis question #3. We also worked on vocabulary for Activity 15.

Then, for the rest of class we did Part 1 of Activity 17. This was a lab where we poured BTB color in cup A, B, C, D, E of a setup tray. 

Then we blew air from a dropper into cup B...

...and then with cup D and E we blew into the BTB with a straw. 

BTB turns from blue to green to yellow when CO2 is added. We then recorded what happened to the BTB in each cup on page 21 of our science notebook in the table.

We will finish the rest of the Act 17 tables next class.

Thursday/Friday, October 30/31, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Aaron from Period 4
Today we finished watching Super Size Me for the first 20 minutes of class. After the movie, we finished the questions that went with the listening guide and reviewed the answers. 

Next we spent the last hour on Activity #15. We read the pages from the SALI text, did the Stopping to Thinks, and worked on vocabulary. We learned about the digestive system such as what the small and large Intestines do, then did the Analysis Questions as a class.

Tuesday/Wednesday, October 28/29, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Angelina from Period 3

So what we did in class today was mainly watching the movie "Super Size Me". 

First, we completed question #12 on page 13 of your science notebook on an index card. Then we got out and opened up to page 15-16 which were the "Super Size Me" Notes. We completed (a majority) of the notes while watching the video, but as a group we first completed the challenge question at the top of page 15 in your science notebook. Note that we did not have enough time to finish all of our notes for the video because we were out of time. Also note that you do not have to write your answers in full sentences.

Monday, October 27, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Jessica from Period 3

Today in science, the students wrote an index card on Activity 14, Conclusion question #2. They also went over sources of error for Activity #14 by looking at the class data collected with this form. For example, maybe you stopped your timer at the wrong time, or your cup overflowed. Also, page 1 of vocab was due.  

The main activity for the day was finding the surface area of cubes in different configurations to show that the more you mechanically break down food, the easier it is for your body to chemically break down the food even further because the vinegar can act simultaneously on more surfaces to chemically break down your food.

Thursday/Friday, October 23/24, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: KC from Period 2

Hello class!

Today we did Activity 14 Part 2, but first Mrs. McCabe stamped pgs 5-6 in our Science Notebooks. Vocab is also due Monday, don't forget. 

First we had to finish our data table and procedures. After that we conducted our experiment by following our exact procedures. 

Here is a video of Table 5's experiment from Period 3.

Then we submitted our results to the qr code and finished our Conclusions. 

After our break, we worked on typing up our Activity 14 Part 2 Materials and Procedures into a Google Doc that was due Monday. Lots of kids got that done and submitted by the end of class. 

That's all for today!

Tuesday/Wednesday, October 21/22, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: Allison from Period 2

Today in Science we started off by receiving our new Unit B Stamp Sheet & the graded answer to #28 Unit A Test was passed back. We reviewed the answers to both #27 and #28, and then did vocabulary for activities 12 & 14 while Mrs. McCabe stamped our Activity 12. 

Table groups next worked on Activity 14 Part 2 by designing an experiment (bottom of page 8) trying to solve this problem: how does the size of food affects the speed at which chemical breakdown occurs? After completing the Procedure Notes on pages 5 & 6 (unnumbered, found after the Activity 12 Analysis), table groups began working on their procedures on page 9. We will finish our procedures and conduct our experiment next class.

Monday, October 20, 2014

GUEST BLOGGER: A.J. from Period 4

Late start today, so we didn't have a ton of time.

We jumped immediately into Activity 12's analysis questions.  The first question table groups worked on together; many groups agreed that the liver in their model was not accurate. We discussed why that might have been (lack of knowledge, lack of materials, lack of space) and said that all models have their limits. The second analysis question students answered on their own. We discussed how many students drew their heart in the wrong position (on the side/shoulder rather than closer to the middle) and that many students had organs in their first picture that we didn't even build. We discussed whether it would be possible for us to build all the organs inside our model, but most agreed the model would be far too packed and chaotic. So the question then came up...if models are inexact and often only tell part of the story, why bother? Students said that despite their shortcomings, models are helpful because they are visual representations of complex things that we don't usually get to see with our own eyes. This discussion provided the answer to analysis question #3.

The second half of the period we worked on Activity 14 Part 1. We did an experiment by dropping a tablet (like the ones that fizz when it touches liquids) into vinegar.

Then we recorded what we observed in our science notebook.

We also went over the answers to THE MODEL above our observations, and the answers are: the antacid tablet represents food; breaking the tablet represents mechanical breakdown; adding vinegar represents chemical breakdown. We'll extend the model next class as we design an experiment to test how mechanical breakdown impacts the speed of chemical breakdown.

Thursday/Friday October 16/17, 2014

Activity 12

Fun stuff!  After playing musical chairs and moving to new seats, we tackled building a model of the human body.  Though we only focused on 6 body systems and limited organs, it was still a practice in comprehending how all the pieces fit together.

Table group leaders assigned clay and organ systems to table members, and each person began to shape their parts.

Many students downloaded the free 4D app so they could see how the parts looked 3 dimensionally as well as how the different systems interact.

After 30 minutes of group work time, bodies were assembled, drawn and labelled at the bottom of page 3, and then dismantled.

We had time to complete the first table at the top of page 4 but not the second/middle table (that's homework).  We'll complete the Analysis Questions on Monday.  Have a great weekend!

Tuesday/Wednesday October 14/15, 2014

Unit A Test Day!!!

We started the class period reviewing tonight's homework, then played a lively round of Kahoot to review for the Unit A Test.  We strolled over the Computer Lab and exchanged stamp sheets to complete the Unit A Notebook Check, then began the Unit A Test (scores for #s 1-26 will be sent home via Flubaroo Wednesday afternoon).  Finally, students started working on their Unit A tabs of their ePortfolios.  This tab should be updated by next week (Tuesday 10/21 for periods 1 &3, Wednesday 10/22 for periods 0, 2 & 4).

Here we go!

After being inspired to start blogging in my classroom at a recent Google Conference, I'm embarking on this blog for the sake of my 7th grade Life Science students at CVMS.

So what's a Blog?

blog

bläɡ/

noun

1. 1.

   a regularly updated website or web page, typically one run by an individual or small group, that is written in an informal or conversational style.
2. 
   

The purpose of this blog is to provide a daily glimpse into what class is like in room 406. What did we learn?  What experiment did we do? What did groups talk about or work on? How many times did Mrs. McCabe trip or tell ANOTHER random story about her kids? And if you're absent (or absent-minded) you can visit this page and get a play-by-play about what you missed.

The "plan" (and that's stated loosely, fingers crossed this all comes to fruition) is that each class period will have a blog entry - that's three blog posts a week. I'm going to hit up students to be "Guest Bloggers" so I don't have to write these all myself.  For information about what a blog entry should look like, how to sign up or where to submit your blog post, click on the link on my webpage under "Daily Blog" and use the pull down menu.

I'll also welcome random musings from students about current events in science.  If you see a movie, read an article, or there's a current event you'd like to report upon that ties into what we're learning in here, feel free to submit.  I, of course, reserve the right as editor, but I'd like to think I'm pretty open-minded.  Let's see what we can come up with.....