Lever Lab

Now, I love all science, don't get me wrong, but I am super excited about starting the biology unit with my 7th graders! It's my all time favorite. Hopefully I will be doing a lot of exciting activities in this unit so that I can share!

We ended our physical science unit with simple machines. There were so many things we could have done with this unit, but with the lack of time we had to choose one activity. We chose to do a lever lab! It was a very simple lab, but covered the important concepts of levers.

We first gave the students a stack of 5 pennies (taped together), a ruler, and they could use a pen or pencil. They used this to construct a lever.

The objective of the lab was so that students will understand the relationship between effort force, resistance fore, and the location of the fulcrum. In this lab, the pennies represented the resistance force, the student's finger representing the effort force, and the pen represented the fulcrum.

Students would follow these steps:

1. Construct a lever using the ruler as the straight bar and the pen as the fulcrum.

2. Place the pen beneath the ruler at the 6 inch mark. Place the stack of pennies over the 1 inch mark.

3. Push down on the 12 inch mark on the ruler. When you push on the ruler, you are exerting an effort force.

4. Move the fulcrum to the 8 inch mark and repeat step 4.

5. Move the pen back to the 4 inch mark and repeat step 4.

And then, we students were to answer these questions before discussion:

Conclusions:

     1) How did your effort force differ between the three trials?

2) Explain how increasing and decreasing the distance between the effort force and the fulcrum affected the effort force.  What type of lever is this?

3) How does this relate to where you push on a door when opening it?

Also, I will be throwing a SUPER BOWL SALE on my TpT websites as well as my TN site.

My Teachers Pay Teachers sale will run from 2/2-2/3 and will be 20% off!!!

My Teachers Notebook sale starts today 2/1 - 2/3 and will be my 20% off plus an additional percent off from teacher's notebook!

Science Fair

Our school just finished up our science fair. All of our projects were due last Friday, and I'm so proud of my students' work! They did great!

Along with the posters, some of my students brought in part of their experiments, even though I told them not to. I really didn't have room for any other items besides the posters and reports, but I'm glad a few brought them in. We had a ball!

I had a student bring in their electromagnet they created.

We also had a lava lamp.

We had a plasma ball!

This was one of my favorite boards. Super girly! Unfortunately, it did not place. We figured it needed more data, and also, the pictures should have been taken in the same lighting. But no matter what, it is a fantastic poster!!

Water Cycle in a Bag

In science class the other day, we did an activity based on the following YouTube video!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WQBtAJxMbY
- thanks for creating this video (side note)


The activity all together was fun, engaging, and the students really enjoyed it. It's a very cheap activity to do, and, I want to add, out of all of the content I have taught this year, I believe they understand the water cycle the most.

This is the order in which I conducted my activity:

1) I showed the first part of the video where the instructions were given.

2) I passed out zip-lock bags, poured water in the bags, and then went around with the food coloring.

3) As I was pouring the water and food coloring, I had 2 students assist in taping the bags to the window. (I only allowed four students at a time to go to get their bags taped.)

4) While the bags were on the windows, I had the students answer the following questions:
          -Write a hypothesis to explain what you think is going to happen to your "water cycle".
          -Draw a picture to represent your hypothesis.
          -Explain the reasoning behind your hypothesis.

5) I also had a mini-lesson explaining evaporation, condensation, and precipitation using a burner and a pot! They loved to see me make it rain with the lid!

6) We went to observe our bags and then had a discussion about what happened.

7) We finished the rest of the video and compared our bags to the video's bags.

Overall, it went well. Our bags never did much due to the fact that the sun was not out most of the time, it was cold, and I teach 45 minute classes! However, it made a GREAT discussion when I asked them why our bags didn't look like the video.

Number Lines

In math class the other week, my class did an activity that I really think helped my students understand converting fractions and decimals as well as placing them in order from least to greatest.

I cannot take credit for this idea because it came from our math book, but although it was very simple, my students enjoyed it.

My students were placed in groups and given a long piece of duct tape. They had to label the tape from -2 to 2 and count by halves. They were given several problems with about 5 decimals and fractions in each problem. Students had to convert the numbers into fractions or decimals to make it easy to place them in order from least to greatest. After they did the math, they had to physically show me on their number line the order that they would be in. They did a great job!

Great Start to the Year!

I am having a great start to the year! I just began the third week of the school year, and it has been a blast. I really wanted to share some of the things that are going on in the classroom.

The first thing I want to talk about is something that I haven't done this year, but I did it last year, and it was great! I definitely cannot take credit for it, but I will provide the link. 

http://www.geosociety.org/educate/LessonPlans/Layers_of_Atmosphere.pdf

Thank you to Jack Fearing for providing. This is a great activity!

This activity helps to teach the layers of the atmosphere. Students will have to graph points, which will ultimately show the patterns in the atmosphere. From that, students have to determine where each layer begins and explain how they can tell. It can be a little challenging for those students who cannot plot points well, but overall, it is a wonderful activity and visual tool to remember the layers of the atmosphere! I love it!

In math class yesterday, I did one of my "closures" at the end of class. It is called a "Snowball Fight". I have never in my life seen students so excited that they were able to throw a piece of paper across the room. Their faces were priceless, and they were SO into it! I had them to get out a piece of paper, write down a problem like the ones that we did that day. We were working on adding and subtracting integers, so they could have written 6 x (-7). They were not to write an answer, but then to ball the paper up and throw it across the room. They then had to pick another one up and answer it. I was so proud :)


I have created closure cards with 50 different closures, including the snowball fight! They are on sale on my TpT and TN sites. They are great for filling in the end of class and lesson plans!

The Most Horrible Blogger Ever!

I know that I must be the most horrible blogger ever! Once the school year was over, I vanished!

Well, I will just have to say that I had an amazing summer, and it was super busy! I got married!!!! It was fabulous! After the wedding, I also took on a summer job. With all this excitement going on in my life, I forgot to update my blog. I'm so horrible!

To make up for lost time, I will try to update more often this school year. I hope that I will have some very exciting things to share. I officially start back tomorrow. I can't believe it!!! I have been out to the school a few times already to make sure I'm ahead of the game. I got very lucky in that I actually got to keep the same classroom that I was in last year. That's pretty exciting! I tried to switch things up just a little bit because change can be good! 

I, of course, stole this idea from Pinterest! It is just so cute! You place two file cabinets back to back and cover with fabric and border. Then, you have yourself a magnet board! 

Above the file cabinets was my life saver my second year teaching. In the bins on the left, I place all of my "not graded" work, and then once graded, I place them in the bins to the right. They are also separated by classes! Simple and it works!

I decided to go with hot pink duct tape for my homework section this year. They can't miss that! The board is not quite done yet, but the hard part is out of the way.

This is the same from last year, different border, but it's my science word wall! You can get these at my TpT store.

I also decided to place my big ideas for math on my bulletin board this year. This was so much easier than taping like I did last year.

Don't forget that TpT is throwing a great sale, and my store as an additional 20%! 

Formula Fun!

I feel like such a horrible blogger! Preparing for testing, grad school, wedding planning, etc. has taken over my life! I have so much to catch up on to share with you guys! I really have a blast blogging, and I cannot wait to catch up in the summer!

I did want to share an activity that we did in class this week. After giving formula quizzes last week, I was a bit disappointed with the results. I had to do something, so we made a formula book! It's pretty much just flashcards, but tied together so that they would not be separated. I gave students the chance to decorate the front all beautiful so that it would be THEIRS and they would love it, and hopefully study it! We will see tomorrow because I'm giving another formula quiz! This was a last minute decision, but I have reflected on what I can do differently next year.

1) Use card stock or index card

2) Find a prettier colored string or yarn

3) Have students come up with the list of formulas (with a little help from me of course)

Overall, they did a good job, and I explained the importance and benefits of using these cards to study for their end-of-grade-tests. I hope taking the time out will be beneficial!

Here are my students beautiful formula card designs!