March 17, 2020 Hi! I hope that you are all staying healthy and doing the best that you can during this unique and challenging situation. Rest, get fresh air, get ready for fishing season, make your pet wish that you were back in school... lots of ways to take care of yourselves while we pass the time. Please feel free to send me a message if you have questions about information that you hear in the news/social media, and I'll do my best to provide you with an insightful response. Also, don't hesitate to reach out just to check in... I care about y'all.
The resources below are provided to make you curious and to keep your brains active while we are away from school. This stuff is not required. But... you might find it interesting, and if you aren't careful, you just might learn something! If you find something cool, shoot me a message and let me know. The same is true if you find other sites with cool information or activities... pass them along!!
Video Library: Here are some cool science-related videos that you might enjoy...
How the Earth formed-- a look at everything cool that happened during the Earth's early life
Interactive science websites: The sites below have lots and lots of cool information, sometimes with games. If you aren't careful, you can spend hours and hours learning cool stuff...
March 19, 2020 Today is the vernal equinox. Happy Spring! If you want to understand why today is the first day of spring, check out this cool, short video from BrainPOP. Besides being the first day of spring, it's also a great day to learn about Black Holes! Copy and paste this web link (http://www.stsci.edu/~marel/black_holes/encyclopedia.html ) into Firefox (it uses Flash, so it won't work in Safari). There are a whole bunch of interesting games and interactive explorations for learning more about Black Holes. Black Holes are pretty cool. Please feel free to email me if you have questions!!
March 23, 2020 Good morning! I hope that everyone is healthy and well, that you had a good weekend, and that you are super excited for more snow!!! Looks like we might be in for up to 8" of heavy wet snow, so get ready to shovel! Let's continue our exploration of the Universe. Next stop.... our nearest star, the Sun! There's a great video from NOVA that tells us lots and lots about the engine that makes our Solar System function, so let's start by watching that. Click on the link to the video "Secrets of the Sun" and enjoy... it's a little less than an hour long. As you watch the video, think about these questions...
1. What could happen today if we had an electromagnetic storm like the one that happened 150 years ago?
2. What did you find interesting about this video?
3. What other questions do you have?
4. Make a sketch that describes the flow of energy within the Sun.
March 25, 2020
Claim-Evidence-Reasoning Claim: A statement of a student’s understanding about a phenomenon or about the results of an investigation
A one-sentence answer to the question you investigated
It answers, what can you conclude?
It should not start with yes or no.
Evidence: Scientific data used to support the claimEvidence must be:
Sufficient—Use enough evidence to support the claim.
Appropriate—Use data that support your claim. Leave out information that doesn’t support the claim.
Qualitative, Quantitative, or a combination of both.
Reasoning: Ties together the claim and the evidence
Shows how or why the data count as evidence to support the claim.
Provides the justification for why this evidence is important to this claim.
Includes one or more scientific principles that are important to the claim and evidence.