The Close of a Calendar Year

Marcro invertebrate count 

Fisher Farm field trip

Eco Columns

Energy in ecosystems

How much habitat?

Importance of details

SCIENCE

As the calendar year comes to a close, we wanted to post an updated blog. At this point we know your children so much better than in September, and we hope you know us a little better, too. We have had a very good and productive time together in science. I am very grateful to our parents for sending us such curious students with an enthusiasm for learning.

As we wind down our study of ecosystems, I have been looking ahead to the remaining units in science this year:

• population dynamics
• geology
• astronomy

We started our year with The Lorax and thinking about connections in systems. One system we have focused on is the pond ecosystem. The students went to the pond to count macro invertebrates (bugs) as part of the national Bucket Buddies project. That report has been published online at:

http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/bucketproj/gallery/

We used the pond count to determine that the pond's water quality is "fair," which is one step above "poor." It was an important lesson in backing up a claim with evidence. The students had other tries at backing up claims with evidence in their mosquito lab report as we worked on drawing a conclusion based on the data. They also had to back up their claim about whether or not we have enough habitat around our school by looking carefully at land use on aerial photos. Lastly, throughout the fall we have looked at the cycling of matter such as carbon and nitrogen and the flow of energy in ecosystems. The eco columns have been a very good learning tool for these topics.

While I often find myself nostalgic as I clean up and put away materials from our labs, I am just as eager for all of the good science to come in the new year.

Happy Holidays!

MATH

I can't believe how fast the school year is going. The students seem to be loving middle school and we are loving their thirst for learning. I am constantly in awe of their work ethic and curiosity.

In math, we have spent a lot of time establishing a strong foundation for the remainder of our units. Being successful in 6th grade math means that students can work well with decimals, fractions, and percents, especially in our current unit of Algebra. Students have been learning how to speak the language of Algebra. We've concentrated on understanding the vocabulary words like variables, algebraic expressions, like terms, simplifying expressions, substitution, coefficients, etc. We recently had a fun lesson on how to understand the algebraic properties. Ask the students about how we used a class volunteer to represent the identity property. They found a lot of amusement in my explanation of the associative property. I've posted pictures to my website (in the School Fun folder) that show some great learning moments. Please take some time to check them out.

After the winter break, we will be finishing our Algebra unit by studying how to solve two step equations, how to solve and graph inequalities, and how to solve algebraic functions. From there, we will move into our Geometry unit.

Have a wonderful and safe break. I will look forward to seeing the kiddos in 2012.