Lesson 1 - Monday, Apr 21 (No school)
Today in science: —
Homework: —
Lesson 2 - Tue, Apr 22 (B, C) & Wed, Apr 23 (H)
Today in science: Students returned to their Wisconsin Fast Plants (WFPs) today, which were very dried out from the long vacation. This was necessary, however, as we discussed when creating a full-circle WFP Life Cycle diagram in our science notebooks. We then picked the dry seed pods from our plants, opened them, and photographed the seeds we found. To document this work we created a “Day 63” entry in our digital WFP Development Log, where Dr. M asked students to upload their seed photos, label them, and write photo captions using key words such as seed pod, seed, seed coat, embryo, cotyledon, and radicle.
Homework: There is no science homework tonight.
Lesson 3 - Wed, Apr 23 (B, C) & Thu, Apr 24 (H)
Today in science: To visualize the life cycle of their plant differently than when viewing a life cycle diagram, students were shown how to create a line graph showing the changing height of one of their plants during the 35 (or so) days they were asked to record such data. Dr. M provided the graphing paper, the graph title, and the spacing/numbering schemes for both the x- and y-axes. Students then used their WFP Growth Logs to retrieve and plot their data points before connecting them with straight lines.
While students were plotting their height data, Dr. M collected students’ data and entered them into his own special spreadsheet so that he could calculate an average line for each class: B, C, & H period. Students were then asked to plot this average line on their own graph in a color different from the one they used to plot their plant (Dr. M used a red line).
Homework: There is no science homework tonight, but students were strongly encouraged to complete their line graphs if they felt they had fallen behind during today’s lesson.
Lesson 4 - Thu, Apr 24 (B) & Fri, Apr 25 (C, H)
Today in science: After putting the finishing touches on their WFP Line Graphs, students were asked to create a special ‘zone’ on their graph showing a period of rapid plant growth during the time between the appearance of their first true leaves and the moment after which the growth of their plant slowed. About this special period of time Dr. M asked students to consider–and then answer–the following question: What was the FOOD for your plant during this period of rapid growth? After recording their answer, Dr. M then quickly compiled the class answers and shared them in the form of a results table in the G7 Notes Portal. Here, students could see the most and least frequently mentioned answers in all three Grade 7 classes.
Dr. M then directed students’ attention back to the Driving Question (DQ) of our current unit and modelled our current answer. By doing so, he tried making it clear to students they have just one more step to take to satisfactorily answer the DQ! In other words, they need to successfully answer the following Focusing Question (FQ): What is FOOD for plants?
To help students begin answering the Focusing Question, Dr. M introduced students to the Power Plant Packet, which he put into the Google Science Classroom. In the time remaining, students began answering the questions in Chapter One (pp. 1-6).
Homework: There is no science homework tonight, but students were strongly encouraged to complete Chapter One of their PPP if they felt they had fallen behind during today’s lesson.
Announcements...
The DRIVING QUESTION of our current unit is: Where does food come from?
C & H period homework collection days: Wednesday & Friday.
B period homework collection days: Tuesday & Thursday.
Including the current school week there are 6 (full) weeks before the start of the summer vacation.