End of the Year wrap-up

Gosh this year has flown! Now it's time to wrap stuff up and get to finals. Students are in the process of taking their finals and turning in all missing/late work. This is a very overwhelming time for all (teachers and students).
As I reflect on this last unit (life science) I'm wondering if I could use technology next year to present the content. I would like to have students set up virtual food web tours online. I wonder if there is a program that does this.

Ecosystem Drawings

Students have been creating drawings of an ecosystem and the many interactions within them. I had wanted to use Glogster for these drawings but the last time I used Glogster the program wouldn't save student work properly. Instead of creating online pictures, students are hand-drawing the pictures. Each week they have a new drawing that adds onto the previous one. We are now up to drawing number three, and students are creating food chains within their two habitats in the ecosystem. My students seem to really be enjoying this project. Most of this project is done individually for homework, but I have found that they are very engaged and have worked hard on these drawings. Some are very elaborate.

Wrap - Up

As we wrap up the life science unit, there are some things that we are reviewing and connecting to other subjects for better comprehension. Students found several temperature readings in the Arctic ecosystems in science class. We had many great discussions about habitats and organisms that can thrive in those ecosystems. Students made predictions and then drew conclusions as to why populations looked the way that they did according to temperature changes in the Arctic. In math class, students plotted these dates and temperature ranges using excel. By looking at their many line graphs that they made, they were able to analyze reasons that organisms immigrated or emigrated from those territories.

Arctic Ecosystems and Graphing

Students are learning about Arctic Ecosystems and the habitats within them. They are analyzing temperature and climate changes to determine how climate change affects habitats and animals living in those environments. In science, the students are watching some videos and working with some interactive tools to better understand habitats in the Arctic. Then, in math, they will graph a series of temperatures in different years using Excel.

Studying Populations

We are studying populations in ecosystems inside habitats. The students are in the process of analyzing data to determine what factors caused these populations to increase or decrease. We will be reading and constructing many graphs over the next couple of weeks. There are also many vocabulary words that are new to them, so we will be doing a lot of games and activities to better learn these terms.

Graphing

While talking about classification of organisms my students observed seeds and grouped them according to similar characteristics that they had. They created a data table and then graphed that data table using a bar graph. My hope was that my students would see that things can be classified and graphed according to the similarities that they have. I hope that they can carry this knowledge over to the classification of animals when we get to that part of the unit. We spent a lot of time going over titles to the graph, and "X" and "Y" axis titles. I found it very interesting that many students weren't sure how to title their graphs. I will be working on this a lot more throughout the unit.

Life Sciences Pre-Test

My students took a pre-test before we get into depth with the Life Science unit. I think that it will be interesting to compare how they did on this pre-test with their post-test after the unit is finished. Some students did very well on this pre-test and therefore I will give them extensions throughout the unit. I found that several students get hung-up on the same questions. These will be areas that I will go into greater depth with throughout this study. Throughout this unit, students will analyze classification systems of organisms, identify how organisms react with their environment and with each other, and look at graphs and data tables to analyze characteristics or movements within populations. My hope is to graph some of these changes using excel later on.