What are Minerals?

The plan for this week is to learn about minerals.  What are they?  What are there properties? Where do we use them in our lives?
To accomplish this we are taking notes about What is a Mineral?  I have a power point and then they took a few notes.  Here is a link link to the powerpoint (thanks sciencequeen) Minerals are SNIFIC.  They are solid, naturally occuring, Inorganic, Fixed composition, and have a Crystal form.
Then we are doing a Web Quest about Minerals in our lives.  Here is the  http://www.westerville.k12.oh.us/userfiles/4170/Classes/5610/Mineral%20Webquest.pdf I did a google search and came up with this.  There are several things I like about it.  It tells them several of the minerals that are around them at all times.  It is interactive and has a video with it too.
After doing this we are going to be testing actual mineral properties like streak, luster, hardness, cleavage, and color.  Next week we are going to be making crystals with bluing agent.

Bullying Awareness at DRS

This last month I had my student create anti-bullying PSAs for students at DRS.  They had really good ideas.  After they recorded their video they used Microsoft Movie Maker to edit and finish their videos.
We determined that bullying incidents will increase with awareness but we feel that comes from everyone being more aware of what is bullying.  Most people think that every mean thing done by another child is bullying. There are three things to look for; Repeated actions over time, There is a power imbalance, and  Intention of the actions.  Most students want to report bullying but are disappointed by the results, because they didn't meet the bullying requirements.  So the next time it happens they say "Its no use, the office won't do anything about it".  All incidents are treated seriously but sometimes they may not end up the way we want them to.

This one is mine so I could see what it was like to produce one,  I created it by using several clips from my students. 

Here are the videos that my classes produced.

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Agenda For the Week of October 13th-18th 2014

Monday 10/13 -> Chapter 2-1 notes, handout from Mr. Kealey

Tuesday 10/14 -> Review the notes from Ch 2-1 and take a QUIZ over the notes

Wednesday 10/15 -> 3 Fault Model; Color, Cut, Glue/tape it together

Thursday 10/16 -> Answer questions about the model

Friday 10/17 ->  FRIDAY STEM Activity 

How many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop?

All of us remember this question poised by the young child as he goes around and asks several different animals.


Finally he gets to the wise old owl.  They test how many it takes and find out it takes 3.

See the 1969 commercial here. 
Was the owl correct?
How many does it really take?  Does the flavor make a difference?  Does the gender of the tester change our results?
This week in C12 we will be testing the question that has been teasing us forever.
What flavor will you test?  Science is fun and tasty

This is our count from 6 bags of Tootsie Pops

Counting their lick tallies

Making tallies for his licks

Tallying their licks

trying to get to the center of their Tootsie Pops

Focused

Come fly with us at Stucky Middle school!

Tomorrow in room C-12 at Stucky Middle School we will be attempting our first lab of the year.  I choose the Paper Helicopter lab as a first one because it is easy to set up, it takes the students through the scientific method quickly, and it fits into our interactive notebooks nicely.  You know the lab with the paper that looks like a paper rabbit after a long day in the meadow. This is the first step in our review of the independent and dependent variables.  They must predict if the length of the wing (independent variable) will increase or decrease the time aloft (dependent variable).  Paper helicopters are fun and quick to conduct to see what they remember from last year.

Here are some of my students in action with the lab.

Testing during 4th hour.

Testing during 5th \hour.

Recording their data.  Good work girls.

5th hour hard at work.

4th hour timing their flight.

3rd hour "testing" posing for a pic.

4th hour calculating the mean time for descent.

3rd hour recording data

Meet the students of room C-12

You know summer is coming to an end when the parking lot at school starts to be filled with cars again.  Vacations are done, back to school shopping is in full swing, and enrollment is complete, .
I am trying to do several different things in my class this year, one being the starting of a blog.  This will be a way for me to reflect back on what we have done in class and hopefully allow my students to reflect with their own success.
 This year the first activity besides the normal going over routines and requirements to be a successful 7th grade student, we are going to do an activity I am calling "Me in Numbers!"  I saw it over at My Life in Verbs but it was originally from the class site of Mr. Auerfeld. This looks like a unique and cool version of getting to know you.  Basically you make a poster about yourself, but everything written is based on numbers that relate to your life.  Like your favorite sport, your address, how old you are in days, and anything else about you that involves numbers.  I will post some of the results of my class.

Here are a few samples from my classes and my daughters, she is a 10 year old and so creative.  I teach science so I had them do 4 with numbers and 4 with sciency terms.  You could adapt this to any format.
                                   

This is what my 5th grade daughter created.

4th hour had fun with this.  

4th hour great work.

7th hour nice work.

6th hour.   Awesome.

May the peace be with you 7th hour.  Great.

7th hour. says she acts like a 3rd grader?

7th hour. great job

6th hour. great work

7th hour did great.

4th hour awesome.