Lesson 1 - Monday, Oct 20
Housekeeping: Text
1. Those periods who hadn’t already finished watching a short video to see if the ideas a Nobel Prize-winning biologist–who wrote a book called, What is Life? in 2020–could improve the “Essential Features of Life” handout we entered into our Science Notebooks in Lesson 2 of Week 08. We discovered that our handout is actually pretty good! But with some light annotating and selective highlighting, we made some minor modifications to improve our important key concept resource.
2. RA 1 (Is it Alive?) – We used a specially-prepared paper checklist (and our new Essential Features of Life sheet) to indicate which of the 8 Essential Features of Life we think each of the 24 ‘objects’ –presented on a set of laminated cards–perform. Students completed as much of this activity as possible by working in teams of 2-4, but most teams still had cards to analyze by the time class ended.
Homework: There is no science homework tonight.
Lesson 2 - Tuesday, Oct 21
Housekeeping: Dr. M let students know they could now see the results of their 50-point Unit 6.1 Test (Classification) in Veracross. He also showed students a grading scale so that they could associate their total (overall) percent with a letter grade.
1. RA 1 (Is it Alive?) – Using the collection of 24 laminated cards, students completed their Essential Features of Life checklists. Dr. M then asked students to group their cards into piles with such as “Definitely living,” “Definitely not living,” and “It might be living.” Using color-coded, Dr. M recorded our class results on a master checklist for additional discussion.
Homework: There is no science homework tonight.
Lesson 3 - Wed, Oct 22 (C, D) & Thu, Oct 23 (E)
Housekeeping: Ms. Bloodworth left a (dead!) lizard on the front teacher’s desk for Grade 6 science students and the question, “What Domain am I in?” Dr. M turned this random event into a pop quiz for students with four questions from Unit 6.1 (Classification) topics and one question from a Unit 6.2 (Cells) topic.
1. Students completed the pop Quiz.
2. We then used our Science Notebooks and formatted our TOC for a new entry, NTS – Common Wall Lizard (Podarcis muralis), in which we recorded and discussed examples of how the common wall lizard might accomplish each of the Essential Features of Life discussed previous lessons.
Homework: There is no science homework tonight.
Lesson 4 - Friday, Oct 24
Housekeeping: Students received their graded 5-point pop quiz in their mailboxes.
1. Each class finished the NTS – Common Wall Lizard (Podarcis muralis) Science Notebook entry started in Lesson 3.
2.
Homework: As per the TASIS MS school homework policy, there is no weekend science homework (due on Monday).
Announcements...
The DRIVING QUESTION of our current unit is: How do the microscopic structures and functions of a cell explain what it means for something to be alive?
C & D period homework collection days: Wednesday & Friday.
E period homework collection days: Tuesday & Thursday.
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