This week's schedule was a little weird so we made the best of it. There was no school Monday for President's Day, and then Tuesday we did the same thing that Thursday's classes did. On Wednesday, only juniors were at school for the ACT test, but it still counted as a "B" day so "A" day students got some work time when they came back to class on Thursday, which was fine because there was a lot of missing work out there. On Friday, we watched a water pollution TED talk and took post test 13 and pretest 14.
This week, we read a couple of Newsela articles about Canadian tar sands and what the extraction of these tar sands is doing to the local environment and economy. We also watched a handful of Youtube clips about the Dakota Access Pipeline and the standoff that happened at the Standing Rock reservation. We continued our water pollution powerpoint, and also went over our Power Standard 13 pretests and answers. We also did a lab on drinking water analysis and did a "silent discussion" activity about the pipelines.
This week we started the week with an awesome activity. We read a case study on Suminoe Oysters and Chesapeake Bay. The lesson started with the first 6 minutes of a short documentary about the dire situation the Bay was facing. We then read and discussed the case study, and followed the reading up with a think pair share activity that lead to a great discussion. We had a snow day on Wednesday, but ended the week reading about the Coelacanth, a thought to be extinct fish we discovered 80 years ago. We started a powerpoint about water pollution and did a lab on analyzing watersheds.
This week, we took post test 12 and pretest 13. We also tried to do an Oceanography webquest assignment but the internet went down for half of the day so it kind of threw a wrench in our plans. As it was, 1B and 4B were able to complete the assignment as scheduled, while the internet was down for 2B and 3B. In response, those periods had to get caught up later in the week which meant some work time was given in the other classes to get caught up on missing work.
This week we learned some more about oceans. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we continued with our powerpoint presentation about oceans and talk a lot about the Coriolis Effect, what causes it, how it works, and it's effects on earth systems. We read an article about Ben Franklin and the gulf stream, did an assignment about Nike shoes washing ashore around the world, and introduced an engagement strategy known as Think-Pair-Share. I asked students about the Coriolis Effect for the TPS.
This week, the beginning of semester two, we finished the documentary "FLOW" and also took our district mandated SchoolCity semester one post test and our semester two pretest. We also took post test 11 and pretest 12 for the class. After the oceans pretest, we learned about a famous oil spill, the Exxon Valdez oil spill. We also read an article about items washing ashore around the world and started a powerpoint presentation about the oceans.
This week, we learned a lot about complex water issues around the world. Topics included water privatization, virtual water, the United Nations declaration that water should be a human right, and we learned about a couple of nanotechnologies that are helping to make water safer to drink in the developing world. We also watched more of "FLOW", a documentary about the issues we are supposed to be looking at for Power Standard 11.
In this short week coming back from Christmas break, we took a post test on the water cycle and moved on to power standard 11 out of 20, which has students "research how communities manage water resources to address social, economic, and environmental concerns." To try to meet the requirements of this standard, we started with readings, questions, and discussions about complex topics including privatization, overpopulation, and global warming and how they affect the water cycle. We will continue these discussions next week.
This week, we learned more about the water cycle and the reservoirs of water on Earth. When we speak of reservoirs of the water cycle in Earth Science class, we don't just mean the artificial lakes we make here in the west to store water to hopefully have available year round, in class it mean all of the places where water is found. We did an assignment to really nail home the idea that most water is in the oceans, and is not drinkable in its current form. We also did a water cycle mastery assignment, which required students to explain the water cycle individually to me to make sure they know what they're talking about.
This week we started our water unit with insight on the water cycle. We are now on to "power standard" number 10 out of 20, which aims to make sure students understand how the processes of evaporation, condensation, precipitation, runoff, infiltration, and transpiration work together to contribute to the water cycle. I introduced the "water cycle cartoon" assignment and gave students time to complete the assignment. We will continue on water next week.
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AuthorMr. Saurer is a science teacher and basketball coach currently teaching at Granger High School. Archives
February 2019
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