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.
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.
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.
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.
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/
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.
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