End of March

The end of the quarter finally came!!! As you can tell, I'm very excited to be in the final stages of the school year... as is your student, I'm sure.

Over the last 8 days or so we've been discussing 2 general topics. First, about how mass, weight, gravity, and motion are interconnected and how they relate to each other. We took some notes,  I showed a few video clips (hammer and feather dropping on the moon), and I did a few demonstrations. The most notable demo showed how inertia affects objects at rest. (Inertia is the resistance matter has to change in speed and direction... an object at rest/motion will stay that way unless acted upon by an unbalanced force). To see a more professional demonstration of what I did in class, go to Steve Spangler's website.

The other topic we've discussed is how we use our senses to detect changes in energy. We took notes on how the eyes and ears work. They also found their blind spots and observed the other function of ears - balance. We did a short lab as well that demonstrated how the nerves in the skin are distributed unevenly for feeling pressure, hot, and cold (you could do the same experiment to find pain sensors, but I didn't think poking each other with pins would be appropriate for this particular age group... but you're welcome to try it at home!). If your student came home with a 6x6 grid on the back of their hand, it was because of this lab. I usually don't encourage them to draw on themselves, but this was for the sake of science.

We will be quizzing today on mass, weight, gravity, & motion.

Physics!!!

We've started our physics unit. We started with waves and the electromagnetic spectrum. We've talked a lot about the energy transferred in different types of waves. Test your student with this question, "What will you hear if you are floating in space and you see an exploding star?"

Now we're talking about gravity, mass, weight, and motion. The tough terms for this part of the unit are inertia and acceleration.

March 8-12: Waves Continued

This week we'll be studying more about waves. Students will be doing a lab where they will be at different stations learning about how waves work in different situations (water, sound, light, etc.). That lab will take up most of our time this week - it will take a day just to explain what to do at each station, and a couple days to do the work. But it's a great hands-on lab, so they should be getting some good experience with a rather abstract idea like waves.

For rise and stretch this week, I'll be demonstrating a cow heart dissection. Students are not required to come, and I would suggest that if your student gets upset by stuff like that, to go to a different stretch activity.

We will also be having a quiz either this week or next. Since we are not going to have much compeleted on waves, it will probably be a quiz based on some old material to help them review for the CRT end of year state science test which is coming up soon at the end of April.

March 1-5: Intro to Waves

Students will start off this week with a fabulously fun test! The DWA!!! This is an untimed writing test given by the state. The students will be expected to plan, write rough drafts, and finally to type out their response to a prompt. They will complete the test on computers in the school - this is a little different than we've done in the past, so hopefully it will go well.

After the DWA on Monday, the students will be cleaning out their folders and putting in the new stuff for our next unit on physics. We'll be starting with waves. So if you have a pool membership, now might be the time to get your suits and have your 8th grader teach you about waves. We will be working on page 6 and 7 of their new notebook pages this week.

Last week they took a unit test on geology. All 3 of my 8th grade classes got into the upper 80's as an average. That's great for a end-of-unit test! I'm very proud of all of their hard work.

Since we just finished with our geology section, I'm hoping to take a few moments over the next few days to talk about the recent earthquakes that have occurred in Haiti and Chile. Please ask your student about it - have them teach you about why earthquakes occur and why they often occur in certain places.

Thank you to those parents who were able to come to student-led conferences last week. Your support is greatly appreciated. Often students get into a 3rd quarter slump - please keep driving them to excel.