Quiz on Tuesday!

We're wrapping up our study of earth science, and will be having a quiz on Tuesday, November 23. The students brought home a study guide yesterday that we completed in class. Please take a few moments to review with your student over the weekend. Thanks!

In Science Class . . . Week of 11/15

This week, we'll officially begin our study of weather and weather maps. For fun, we'll be using our mobile computer lab to go online to study weather maps. We're using the site, www.weather.com, but there are lots of sites out there! A sample weather map looks like this:

Key questions:

• What symbols did you see on the weather maps, and what do they mean? ( H= high air pressure, L= low air pressure, etc)
• Why does the California coast have more moderate temperatures than inland? (Because we are near the ocean, and the air over the ocean heats up much more slowly because the ocean itself does not heat up easily). 
• Where do our storms in Berkeley come from? (Primarily from out over the Pacific Ocean)

Water Cycle

In Science Class . . . Week of 11/1

This week, we'll be learning about the water cycle. The students have already studied condensation and evaporation, so these concepts should be familiar. We will be reviewing vocabulary and playing a game. Key questions:

• What is the water cycle? (The global water-recycling system that includes water in all three states - gas, liquid, and solid)
• Where is most of the earth's water? (In the ocean as salt water. Only about 1% of the earth's water is fresh and available to us to drink.)
• As a water molecule, where did you "go" in the water cycle game? (Answers were vary - may include ground water, glacier, animal, ocean, clouds, river, lake, etc)