Science Happenings: Wrap of Chemistry
Students completed three assessments this week as part of our chemistry unit wrap up. In order to prepare for those assessments, students had over 130 minutes in class to design and build a review game. We played those games on Monday to solidify vocabulary and major concepts. On Tuesday, students had the chance to advocate for themselves by attending review sessions on graphing, modeling, and vocabulary. This marked our sixth different review experience during the course of the unit. Therefore, students should have felt very comfortable with what content and skills were on the assessments. Each assessment focused on a different portion of our science continuum. The first required students to draw a model of the Carbon Cycle using vocabulary from a word bank. The second focused on our graphing skills using our TAILS strategy. Finally, we did a multiple choice assessment that drew on the vocabulary and major concepts of the unit. We will be posting those results over the course of the next week. Please remember that any late work will need to be submitted prior to Thursday, February 22nd when we close the books on the unit.
Next Steps: Science Fair
The science classes have now wrapped up our third unit of the year and will now focus on our science fair unit. The early parts of the science fair will be the most critical for our students, since they will select a topic they will need to work with for 5 weeks and potential pick a partner who they can work well with during this project. We have already started talking about who makes a good partner and how that can impact the success of a project. We will be posting our weekly check-ins during the course of the project, like every unit we have done at this point. However, it will be critical for students to make sure they are completing those portions in a timely manner as they will not advance to the next step before finishing the previous one. We want to avoid the last minute “push” to break up a “snowball” of work. Please reflect with your students on these check-ins.
Students completed three assessments this week as part of our chemistry unit wrap up. In order to prepare for those assessments, students had over 130 minutes in class to design and build a review game. We played those games on Monday to solidify vocabulary and major concepts. On Tuesday, students had the chance to advocate for themselves by attending review sessions on graphing, modeling, and vocabulary. This marked our sixth different review experience during the course of the unit. Therefore, students should have felt very comfortable with what content and skills were on the assessments. Each assessment focused on a different portion of our science continuum. The first required students to draw a model of the Carbon Cycle using vocabulary from a word bank. The second focused on our graphing skills using our TAILS strategy. Finally, we did a multiple choice assessment that drew on the vocabulary and major concepts of the unit. We will be posting those results over the course of the next week. Please remember that any late work will need to be submitted prior to Thursday, February 22nd when we close the books on the unit.
Next Steps: Science Fair
The science classes have now wrapped up our third unit of the year and will now focus on our science fair unit. The early parts of the science fair will be the most critical for our students, since they will select a topic they will need to work with for 5 weeks and potential pick a partner who they can work well with during this project. We have already started talking about who makes a good partner and how that can impact the success of a project. We will be posting our weekly check-ins during the course of the project, like every unit we have done at this point. However, it will be critical for students to make sure they are completing those portions in a timely manner as they will not advance to the next step before finishing the previous one. We want to avoid the last minute “push” to break up a “snowball” of work. Please reflect with your students on these check-ins.