Feb 21-25: Earth's Changes (Fast & Slow)

It's been a long, but fun week in 8th grade science. Here's what we've been doing:

Monday - Finish fossils notes (p8). Use the rest of the time to make up anything students may need to.
Tuesday - Slow & Fast Changes of the Earth (p9 - we watched some pretty awesome clips showing lava flows, mudslides, glacier calving, etc. - pretty impressive stuff).
Wednesday - Finish p9 & Candy Quakes Lab (p10 - it must be good if it involves smashing candybars as thought they were tectonic plates).
Thursday - Collection of Superhero picture, research, & superhero persona sheet for student led conferences.
Thursday & Friday - In the Shadow of Vesuvius (movie about one of the world's most famous volcanoes and the people who lived, and who live there).

Next week (around Tuesday) we will have our geology unit final - please encourage your students to study, study, study!

Feb 14-18: Fossils & Misc. Stuff

This has been a really strange week... we had a lot of assemblies, schedule changes, and testing.

Monday - Recognition Assembly 3rd period, Figurative Language Valentines 4th period, & continued heart assembly 5th period.
Tuesday - Start fossil notes p8 (honor's assembly during 5th)
Wednesday - Fossils & playdough activity - students made impressions of plastic toy animals in play dough, swapped teams, and then had to figure out what animal the fossils were depicting.
Thursday - Directed Writing Assessment (persuasive essay writing state test)
Friday - Finish superhero pictures

Feb. 7-11: Erosion, Geologic Column, & Hearts

February 1-14 is national "Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week." To be honest, I wouldn't know much about this, except that I work closely with another faculty member who has a son who was born with a major heart defect. She's a great mom who has made it a goal to help others recognize that these problems exist. We're going to have a "Heart Assembly" on Friday where Mrs. Dowdle and Mr. Shaw (both 8th grade science teachers) will talk about their kids who were born under extreme circumstances. I think the kids will find it fascinating - I sure do. Then, during our upcoming Rise and Stretch, I'll be performing a deer heart dissection, thanks to one of the students on our team who donated it for the good of science! (Again... that's a DEER heart, not the student's heart). To learn more about "Congenital Heart Defect Awareness Week", click here.

Other than heart stuff, we're still plowing in to our geology unit.

Monday - Stream (Erosion) Table Observation p6 (students watch weathering, erosion, and deposition in real time!).
Tuesday - Relative Dating & Geologic Column Notes p7 (we learned about how usually older layers of rock are near the bottom of the column, and younger are near the top. However, folding and faulting can play tricks on us if we don't look for them carefully!).
Wednesday - Review and take R&S Quiz on Rock Types & Rock Cycle (igneous... sedimentary... metamorphic)
Thursday - Finish Geologic Column Notes p7 (forces between Earth's plates: compressional, tensional, & transversal).
Friday - Heart Assembly during 3rd, 5th & 6th (excused from 6th - but still need to get the work). Because of how it's worked out, students will come back to class during 4th and work on their superhero mineral drawing.

Jan 31 - Feb 4: Rocks & Superheros

This quarter's research project has focused on minerals. Students researched a particular mineral and made a superhero based on their mineral's properties. Many of the minerals have some very interesting properties - some glow, some double in size when they get wet, some have incredible strength, etc. Perfect stuff for making up a superhero persona. They will be coloring a picture of their superhero (or supervillian if that's how your student rolls), and will also be writing a creative short story in English to go along with it. This is a fun activity because our 8th grade teams are all named for superheros - we're the Spiderman Team.

Monday - Rocks & Minerals Movie (I got sick... and had a sub).
Tuesday - Mineral Research
Wednesday - Chocolate Rocks lab (students looked at melted chocolate and rice krispy treats and made comparisons to real igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks).
Thursday & Friday - Earth's Surface Notes p5 (students learned more about specific processes for making a sedimentary rock: weathering, erosion, deposition, & cementation).

Jan 19-21: Rock Types & the Rock Cycle

Only 3 days, but lots of information this week!

Monday & Tuesday - NO SCHOOL!!!
Wednesday - Start rock type notes p3. How are igneous rocks formed? What are the 2 types of igneous rocks and how are they different from one another?
Thursday - Finish rock type notes p3. How are metamorphic rocks and sedimentary rocks formed?
Friday - Rock Cycle pg3 - How are rocks changed from one type to another?

Students will be looking at a lot of samples of rocks this week - please emphasize along with me the importance of being careful with the rocks that we'll be handling. If you have any cool rocks at home, it would be great to see some from "the field."

Jan 10-14: Minerals

Yes, we are nerds.

We've started a new unit - yay!!! We're moving on to geology (geo = Earth/rocks, -ology = study of). Some people may find rocks boring, but I actually really like geology. It's fascinating to me how the Earth formed all the amazing differences in rocks and structures that we can observe. Utah is a great place for studying geology - so many cool things to see (too bad we don't live closer to Moab...). Might I suggest Arches National Park as a fabulous place to go over spring break (that's where my family always went) - and your students should be able to tell you all sorts of cool things about the rocks found there. The pictures are of myself and my husband while we were dating a few years ago - ah Moab... how romantic!

To begin with, we're starting with the building blocks of rocks - MINERALS! Students will learn how we determine which mineral is which, and what tests help us to differentiate them.

An uncanny likeness, I think...

Monday - Take out important notes from old folder and make new geology notebook. There are some students who need to buy a new folder (I warned them at the beginning of the year to protect and take good care of their folders, but many didn't listen). I would prefer it if they got folders that are the same color as the one's given to the whole class (3rd - red, 4th - blue, 5th - yellow). They need to be thin and be able to put in three hole punched papers.

Tuesday - Begin mineral notes (p1) - what is a mineral, a rock, a crystal... etc.

Wednesday - Finish notes (p1) and practice performing mineral tests.

Thursday - Discover a mineral lab (p2) - students will perform tests to identify 6 unknown minerals.

Friday - Begin rock cycle notes (p3).. you remember... igneous, sedimentary, metamorphic :)

We will not have school Monday Jan 17th because of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Plus... no school on Tuesday for teacher-finalizing-second-quarter-grades day (I think there's a more official term for it, but that's the best I can do).

Jan 3-7: Endangered Animal Presentations & Make-Up Work

Ok, ok... I know I've been a bad blogger this last month. It's been a little crazy.

For those of you who don't know - I'm expecting our first baby this April, and found out on Christmas that it's a GIRL!!! Many of your students have been very "helpful" in picking out names for our baby girl. I hope they aren't too disappointed should I decide not to use "Scooby."

Last month we finished up our ecology unit. Students did a lot of research on an endangered species, and wrote a persuasive paper about whether or not to protect it. I hope they learned something about human impacts on the environment and how complicated it can be when we try to make changes concerning the use of habitats.

We took our ecology final just before Christmas, and I was very pleased with how almost everyone did. Every class had an average score in the B range, which is awesome! As a reward, we made ice cream on the last day of class before Christmas Break (a mess, but very fun).

This week we've been busy giving short presentations about the animal that they researched. Soon we will be getting rid of all our ecology stuff and we'll soon start on geology topics.

As a note to parents - I'm offering extra credit to students who can help me with some lab supplies. I have some great activities planned, but getting the materials can be costly. Spreading out the cost among about 100 students makes the burden much easier. So here's what I need within the next few weeks:

• Chocolate, white, and butterscotch chips 
• Fun sized candy bars (not solid chocolate or peanut butter cups - things like Snickers, Kit Kat, etc., something with stuff inside).

Thank you for your support!