The Conn: Monday, March 27th, 2017

Today's Quote:

Where you are going
and the place you stay
come to the same thing.
What you long for
and what you’ve left behind
are as useless as your name.
Just one time, walk out
into the field and look
at that towering oak—
an acorn still beating at its heart.

~ Peter Levitt, from One Hundred Butterflies – Broken Moon Press 1992

RECAP:

In 8th grade classes students spent last week reviewing areas that they were weak in according to the DBMA test results. After that, they worked on their review packet for the FCAT State Exam. FCAT Facts in a Flash.

7th grade classes worked on the background information for genetics and then spent time reviewing the areas they are weak in according to their DBMA test results.

6th grades spent time reviewing the areas they were weak in according to their DBMA results.

SKILLS BOOST:

"Because scientists cannot prove that global climate change will occur, it probably won't." How is the scientific reasoning in this statement incorrect? 1.

In space, a cloud of gas and dust is called a nebula. A star forms when a nebula becomes so compressed by gravity that a particular process occurs. The nebula is NOT classified as a star until this process takes place. What process has to occur before a nebula becomes a star? 2.

BRAIN BENDER:

You are in a concrete room. There is a steel pipe 25 cm in length cemented into the concrete floor. The pipe protrudes about 15 cm. A ping pong ball is dropped down the pipe. There is a fraction of a centimeter clearance around the ping pong ball and the pipe. Your task is to get the ping pong ball out ofthe steel pipe undamaged. The only items that are available are a wooden ruler, a ball of string, a pocket mirror, a paper clip and a small magnet. Since nothing else is allowed into the room, how could you get the plastic ping pong ball out of the steel pipe?

AGENDA:

7th grade- Medelelian Genetics

8th grade- Introduction to Energy

Types of Energy

6th grade- The Solar System

HOMEWORK ALL GRADES: IXL two targeted lessons using your benchmark

7TH Grade:

Watch the video and take notes!

UNIT/ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE: Heredity and Reproduction PACING: 6 weeks

Benchmarks SC.7.L.16.1 Understand and explain that every organism requires a set of instructions that specifies its traits, that this hereditary information (DNA) contains genes located in the chromosomes of each cell, and that heredity is the passage of these instructions from one generation to another.
SC.7.L.16.2 Determine the probabilities for genotype and phenotype combinations using Punnett Squares and pedigrees.
SC.7.L.16.3 Compare and contrast the general processes of sexual reproduction requiring meiosis and asexual reproduction requiring mitosis.
SC.7.L.16.4 Recognize and explore the impact of biotechnology (cloning, genetic engineering, artificial selection) on the individual, society, and the environment.

SC.7.N.1.5 Describe the methods used in the pursuit of a scientific explanation as seen in different fields of science such as biology, geology, and physics.
SC.7.N.3.2 Identify the benefits and limitations of the use of scientific models.
HE.7.C.1.7 Describe how heredity can affect personal health.

SC.912.L.16.2 Discuss observed inheritance patterns caused by various models of inheritance, including dominant, recessive, codominant, sexlinked, polygenic, and multiple alleles.

SC.912.L.16.14 Describe the cell cycle, including the process of mitosis. Explain the role of mitosis in the formation of new cells and its importance in maintaining chromosome number during asexual reproduction.

SC.912.L.16.16 Describe the process of meiosis, including independent assortment and crossing over. Explain how reduction division results in the formation of haploid gametes or spores.

8TH GRADE-

Watch the video and take notes!

UNIT/ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE: Energy PACING: 3 Weeks

Benchmarks SC.912.P.10.1 – Differentiate among the various forms of energy and recognize that they can be transformed from one form to others.

SC.912.P.10.2 – Explore the Law of Conservation of Energy by differentiating among open, closed, and isolated systems and explain that the total energy in an isolated system is a conserved quantity.

SC.912.P.10.4 – Describe heat as the energy transferred by convection, conduction, and radiation, and explain the connection of heat to change in temperature or states of matter.

SC.912.P.10.5 – Relate temperature to the average molecular kinetic energy.

SC.9.12P.10.6-Create and interpret potential energy diagrams, for example: chemical reactions, orbits around a central body, motion of a pendulum (also covered in Changes of Matter and in Energy).

SC.912.P.10.11 – Explain and compare nuclear reactions (radioactive decay, fission and fusion), the energy changes associated with them and their associated safety issues.

SC.912.P.10.12 – Differentiate between chemical and nuclear reactions.

SC.912.P.10.14 – Differentiate among conductors, semiconductors and insulators.

SC.912.P.12.11 – Describe phase transitions in terms of kinetic molecular theory.

SC.7.P.11.4 – Observe and describe that heat flows in predictable ways, moving from warmer objects to cooler ones until they reach the same temperature.

6TH GRADE-

you MUST have your rocket here, in class by March 10th, 2017

What's inside our solar system?- Write your answers in your COW under today's date.

Watch Video and Take Notes!

Homework over Spring Break and the week after: Keep a Moon Journal! Every night, make an entry in your COW diagramming what the moon looks like. This will be due the day we return to school

UNIT/ORGANIZING PRINCIPLE: Astronomy (The Solar System) PACING: 3 Weeks

Benchmarks SC.8.E.5.4 Explore the Law of Universal Gravitation by explaining the role that gravity plays in the formation of planets, stars, and solar systems and in determining their motions. SC.8.E.5.7 Compare and contrast the properties of objects in the Solar System including the Sun, planets, and moons to those of Earth, such as gravitational force, distance from the Sun, speed, movement, temperature, and atmospheric conditions. SC.8.E.5.8 Compare various historical models of the Solar System, including geocentric and heliocentric.

SC.8.E.5.9 Explain the impact of objects in space on each other including: 1. the Sun on the Earth including seasons and gravitational attraction 2. the Moon on the Earth, including phases, tides, and eclipses, and the relative position of each body.

SC.8.E.5.10 Assess how technology is essential to science for such purposes as access to outer space and other remote locations, sample collection, measurement, data collection and storage, computation, and communication of information.

SC.8.E.5.12 Summarize the effects of space exploration on the economy and culture of Florida. (Not assessed on FCAT)

SC.6.N.2.2 Explain that scientific knowledge is durable because it is open to change as new evidence or interpretations are encountered.

SC.6.N.2.3 Recognize that scientists who make contributions to scientific knowledge come from all kinds of backgrounds and possess varied talents, interests, and goals.

SC.6.N.3.2 Recognize and explain that a scientific law is a description of specific relationship under given conditions in the natural world. Thus, scientific laws are different from societal laws.

SC.6.N.3.4 Identify the roles of models in the context of the sixth grade science benchmarks.