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Week 1: 9/15-9/19 Welcome to the new school year! Class information and general requirements for Sixth Grade Science can be found on this course outline. We learned about classroom expectations and did an activity called Milk Co-motion to get in the spirit of Science class. (See pictures below and on pictures page.) We'll turn this activity into an experiment later in the week by establishing a variable in the procedure. A pleasantly surprising number of students already know what a "variable" is (kudos to elementary teachers!). "Variable" happens to be the first word on our first vocab quiz, which will be given on Friday, 9/26.
Week 2: 9/22-9/26 We begin looking at the concept of "living" versus "not living" by classifying picture cards into groups. On Monday and Tuesday we looked at pictures of living and non-living things and sorted them according to the life processes that they were able (or not able) to perform. From the list of these processes we created an operational definition of "living:" something is living if it needs water, consumes nutrients for energy, exchanges gasses, grows, eliminates waste, responds to stimuli, and reproduces. We will refine this concept during the course of our study. Students will move on to exploring the differences between "living" (alive), dead, dormant and non-living and how scientists use the term "organic." A summary of the first lesson of our first investigation (provided by the district) can be found at this link.
Week 3: 9/29-10/3 Students begin learning the proper care and use of the light microscope. On Friday we have our first test on the concepts of living and non-living. Students set up "mini-ponds" in the classroom to use later as habitats for microscopic organisms.
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