In Science Class . . . Week of 10/25

This week, we will be working on a study guide and taking a quiz in preparation for the end of the grading period. The students will be getting a study guide and working to complete it on Tuesday, and then they'll be taking a quiz on Thursday. The study guide will go home with them on Tuesday afternoon. The quiz questions will be very similar (hint, hint!) to the study guide questions, so please take a moment on Tuesday or Wednesday night to go over it with your student.
Thanks!

In Science Class . . . Week of 10/18

Sorry for the delay! It was a super busy week, as I attended the CA Education Conference in Sacramento.

Last week, the 4th and 5th graders explored the properties of air using syringes, tubing and clips. By pushing the air back and forth, we determined that air is made of matter and does take up space. The students also did a reading that explained how the pressure and density of air changes with elevation.
Key questions:

• What happened when you put a clip on the end of the tube and why? (The plunger to the syringe couldn't go in far because the air was trapped.
• Why did the plunger of one syringe go out when you pushed the other connecting syringe in? (The air pushed the plunger out when we pushed on the other end.)
• Is air pressure higher or lower on the top of a mountain? Why? (The air pressure is lower because the air molecules are spread out more. This is also why it's harder to breathe at elevation.)

In Science Class . . . Week of 10/11

This week, the students performed an experiment that compared how water and soil respond to the energy from the sun. We took cups of soil and water outside, and recorded temperatures of the materials in the sun every few minutes for 15 minutes, then moved them to the shade and recorded temperatures every few minutes there. This experiment will help students when we begin our study of weather and climate in a few weeks.  On Thursday, the students created line graphs of their data, and we discussed independent vs. dependent variables. Key questions:

• What did you discover about how soil and water heat? (Soil heats up and cools down much more quickly, while water is a "heat sink," meaning that it takes an ton of energy to warm it up.)
• What was the dependent variable in the experiment? (Temperature, because it depends on the time the material was in the sun. )
• What variables did we control? (Amount of materials used, time in the sun/shade, type of thermometer used, etc)