Week in Review
The second week of school proved to be a positive one. Schedules continue to change for some students, but it appears that most students are where they are going to remain for the remainder of the year.
In Chemistry, the students began the week with a lesson on the communication aspects of science. Middle school thoroughly covered the observation, questioning, hypothesis, experimentation side of the process by which scientists do their work. This leaves high school to focus on the later part: what to do with the results.
Students looked at journal articles. Investigated different articles published in the Annals of Improbable Research, a journal which is the annual sponsor of the Ig Nobel awards. Students further acted in the manner of peer reviewers, as they questioned findings and proposed alternate ones.
But, we didn’t linger too long on communication, since we will be practicing it throughout the entire year. We also needed to move ahead to other important skills; namely: graphing. Students learned the importance of graphs, the difference between line and bar graphs and when to use each, and the appropriate labels to apply to each axis on a graph.
A point of weakness that I noticed on the Friday Quiz, however, is that students sometimes invert their axes. While there is not always a cause-and-effect relationship between the x- and y-axis, I have found that in cases where there is, students will wrongly put the cause on the y-axis and the effect on the x-axis. This is because they naturally read left-to-right, so encounter the axes in that order, but it is still incorrect. Cause should go on the x-axis, and effect should go on the y-axis.
After graphing, we learned how to take measurements, including the correct number of significant figures to record. According to the Friday Quiz, this is a tough skill to master. Should students need any additional practice, they can find it here, here, and here.
We finished off the week with a Friday Quiz and then learned the basics of using dimensional analysis. Based on the Friday Quiz results, I can tell that some students are still in the “this cannot really be happening” phase of returning to school. While that is normal in the second week of school, especially after a long weekend, if they do not concentrate and focus, they could fall be hind. And since chemistry is a subject where the skills and concepts build, fixing problems early is the best way to avoid a snowball effect. All students are welcomed and encouraged to attend Thursday Lunch in-school tutoring time with me, in the classroom. Together everyone achieves more!
As for Earth Science, we began the week in the library, typing our lab reports on the Thumb Wars experiment we had just completed. While we didn’t have back-to-back days in the library, there were still two days last week that were devoted to typing up the lab report, and an additional day for peer-editing to produce a final draft that was representative of the student’s best efforts. Those lab reports, in final form, were due today (Monday 9/8).
The other day last week was devoted to learning about measurement, and we did an activity where we used a variety of different tools to measure different objects in the classroom. We did this to polish our skills with using the tools, but also to practice the new rules on recording measurements with proper uncertainty.
This upcoming Friday is Earth Science’s first Friday Quiz. Students are welcomed and encouraged to come receive extra help in the classroom on Thursday at lunch. And please remind your student that late work is not accepted. Some students seem to believe this to not be the case and so have made choices other than completing their work, in the hopes that they can do the work late. They cannot.
