October 2008

   Week 1:  10/6-10/10   Students continue to explore the world of biology using microscopes.  This week we looked  at  the concepts of a "focal plane" and "field of view." 

The students are doing a very good job completing work and following classroom procedures.  I hope you will congratulate them on  doing such a good job every day.  I really appreciate them. 

We are going to use 2-liter soda bottles (preferably clear) to build some habitat projects.  If you buy this type of bottle, could you recycle them through room 307, please.

    Week 2: 10/13-10/17   Now that students have mastered the basics of the compound light microscopes, we will use them to explore the world of microorganisms.  We have ordered paramecia, euglena and amoeba from a Science supply company, and the students will discover this week that they have been growing individual sets of microorganisms for the last two weeks right in the classroom.  We'll look and see how they are doing.

Test on Friday on microscopes including measuring the field of view.

   Week 3:  10/20-10/24  An activity called "Ribbon of Life"  that accompanies our book stresses the diversity of life forms from the simplest bacteria to the most complex multi-cellular organisms like humans.  Hints to the answers for this worksheet can be found here.

Students will continue to use the microscopes, looking at the three types of locomotion among various microorganisms (vocab:  flagellum, cilia, pseudopod).  The students will also  contemplate and confirm that they are indeed made of cells too, by looking at their own cheek cells under the microscope.

Week 4:  10/27-10/31  Our first video of the year presented historical information about cell theory, from Robert Hooke, who is credited with naming "cells," to Schwann and Schleiden who theorized that all cells are alive and all living things are made of at least one cell.  At the end of the week we will use the microscopes again to look at living cells and make more connections between the readings,  the video and the real things. 

Students set up sprouting chambers in anticipation of our next look at cells (root cells).   This activity provides a transition from cell theory to a look at life processes in plants.