8th Grade

The 8th graders are continuing to study the human body. Right before holiday break they were challenged to create a rap describing a piece of food as it travels through the digestive system. While they are sometimes hard to understand in the following videos, they truly had a deep understanding of the digestive system by the time they finished. During their exam I could hear them referring back to the rap as they illustrated and then wrote about the journey of a piece of food.

We have now moved on to the Nervous and Endocrine systems. Check out the 8th grade blogs to learn about why we stuck pins in each other and fought with a door jam! Additionally, each student has chosen a street drug to research and will be reporting their findings to the class. As these students move on to high school this information will be more relevant and important to know.

7th Grade

The 7th graders are studying bacteria and viruses. The first activity I did was to have a Virus Party. Before class, I put plain water in 10 test tubes and a dilute base solution in one. Each student chose a test tube not knowing which was the “vector”. With a pipette and test tube in hand the students mingled at the “party” while I played music. When I turned off the music they exchanged the fluid in the test tube with one other person. I repeated this four times and they exchanged with three other people . I then went around and added phenolphthalein, an indicator solution used  to detect a base.

 

What followed was a  honest discussion about how easily infectious diseases  are spread including sexually transmitted diseases. Please read the 7th grader’s blogs to see what they learned from this activity.

 

6th Grade

The 6th graders are studying matter. We started with the concepts of mass, volume and density. This last week they performed a truly gross, yet fun experiment. The students were placed in groups of two and one volunteered to be the “chewer”. The question posed was “Will the mass of bubblegum increase or decrease over time while being chewed?” Most students predicted that it would increase. What do you think? Read the 6th graders blog’s to find the answer!

AND JUST IN!!!!!

Our 3D printer has arrived and is all set up. Time to put our thinking caps on and design some cool stuff! Special thanks to RJG, Inc. a local  manufacturing company along with the TBAISD career tech center and Drea Weiner for all of their support!

Check out the great things happening in the Grand Traverse area with 3 D printers in the classroom. 3D Printing PLC News

If you haven’t set up your student’s Tinkercad account please do so!