Renewable Resources

Students are beginning a unit in Science on how to help our planet maintain resources.  To start off, students made recycled paper.  They are now reading about renewable resources, mainly water, and figuring out how they can conserve water and prevent water pollution.

The girls are reading about renewable resources together

Bileica and Dulce reading and learning

Jennifer and Dominique relaxing and learning

Students will be creating posters about how to conserve water and prevent water pollution.  To do this they will be using Pic Collage on the iPads.  After their posters are finished and printed they will be using them in a commercial to promote saving water.  They will do this using the camera on the iPads.

Stay tuned for more in the next few days!

Katy

Pictures from the week...

We have started our three day weekend...YAY!  Hope all the students enjoy the time off and have fun, I know I will:)

Here are some pictures from happenings in our room this week...

Students made recycled paper

Students observed, discussed and recorded their findings

The paper fell apart pretty easily

Giovany is showing off his group's paper

Jennifer and Brandon are recording their thoughts

Students were shown answers that would receive an A and answers that were not A-worthy

This is our fraction and percent equivalency chart...we add to it constantly

Students learned how to reduce/simplify/put fractions in lowest terms

-Katy

Science Investigation

Today was Day Two of the Fossil/Sedimentary Model investigation in Science.  On Day One, students observed trilobite and crinoid fossils.  They took notes on their observations in their science notebooks.

Student observing fossil

Taking notes on observations

Sentence stems

Today, Day Two, students created their own sedimentary rock model out of clay.  They also used a button, a marble, a cube, and a washer as "fossils", which they out into each layer of their rock model.
To do this work they had to follow very specific directions.

Directions for Investigation

Warming up the clay

Students smashing clay for model

Completed sedimentary rock model

Once students finished their model they exchanged with another group.  Students then cut the model down the middle and drew what they saw.

Washer, Button, Marble, and Cube "Fossils"

Student recording

Day Three students will write about what they found in each layer and how the environment of a layer changes as the years progress.

Argumentative Writing

Today was the first day of our argumentative writing unit.  To begin, students read and discussed questions.   These questions were in a document in Dropbox, which they took a screen shot of and opened in Doodle Buddy.  Students used our new styluses to write their answers to the questions.  This was done in partners, then discussed in teams.

Once teams discussed their answers to these questions they had to come up with a group answer and write them on sticky notes.  These sticky notes were then placed on chart paper.

To go over all the teams' answers as a class we used an iPad and Apple TV to project the different answers on the sticky notes.  This way all voices were heard and honored, and the students could get an idea of what everyone said.  It was great to see similar answers, as well as some outliers.

Tomorrow students will help us develop a chart that explains exactly what argumentative writing is.  This will help students determine the difference between a persuasive paper, which they have written before, and an argumentative paper.  If you're wondering, the greatest difference between the two papers is the use of facts.  In argumentative writing, you have to defend your stance with facts, whereas in persuasive writing you can rely more on just opinion statements and lots of strong voice.

Hopefully we will be able to post final projects when students get to that point.