Facebook Page!

We decided to find another avenue to share the good things happening in our science classroom. Facebook! Here is a "like button" to click. I will be very interested to observe the data we are able to collect and watch it grow!

Piping Plover Mini Challenge

Here is a student sample of work they produced for our Piping Plover Mini Challenge. The challenge can be found by clicking here. Overall it was a good project and we are extremely thrilled with the students being able to create accounts on vimeo for them to publish to the world! Students then are in the process of embedding their videos on their newly created blog! I will post an example of a student blog soon.

Our Topics

Here is a video I put together showing some of the topics the student groups have picked to work on. We are in the research phase right now and are finding that this is a pretty big thing to take on. Students are excited though!!!!! I had some fun creating a background beat using garageband!

Wilder Issues In Science Shares Our Nature

The students in my Wilder Issues in Science Primetime Class wanted to share the nature that we have surrounding our middle and high schools. Here is a small sample of what they created. This video is a collection of three projects. All pictures were taken by personal cameras or supplied ipod touches. Students emailed me those photos and videos and I placed all pictures/videos into a file that every device could access. We did address copyright laws and using only a percentage of a song...still can improve on that one! Another thing that would be really nice is if Students could upload their individual creations to you tube as a place to host a high definition film.

AKAT

All kids all the time! Here are some pictures of the group working together. Transforming our old mini MGM into this has been a fantastic change. It will be interesting to see how this process evolves and how much the entire staff buys in.

Peer Editing Day

It was a good day today of students peer editing their project proposals. Ready to move on to the research phase of the project!

Collaborize Classroom Formative Assessment

Recently we tried a website called "Collaborize Classroom" in which students were asked to answer a question and combine their answer with a vote for selections they agreed with. It was a good first try and I recommend we continue to use this program!

Start of the We Can Change The World Challenge

Today we began the "We Can Change The World Challenge"

First Trial of Screen Chomp App

Here is a student sample of a screen chomp they made using the ipad. This was one option students had on the structured choice review for the upcoming basic ecology test.

Owl Pellets to Food Webs

Here is a great video that Bob Wandel made that documents how we used the owl pellets to gain understanding of food webs!

Owl Pellet Project 2011 from bob wandel on Vimeo.

Food Web Creations

Students created food webs based on what they found in their owl pellet.

Owl Pellet Habits of Mind

Today we started our owl pellet lab. This lab lays the foundation for our food web study. Bob Wandel will be organizing clips and pictures connecting the activities to our learning targets. I thought it would be interesting to explore what the kids were thinking before, during, and after today's activity. It is also fun to see how Bob and I are improving at documenting what we are doing in class. We find ourselves asking better questions and documenting those thoughts.

Parasite PSA Challenge

Here is a collection of PSA challenge movies that the students worked on. We took about 3-4 per class that represented a variety of student work.

Science Meets English

We had a great chance to combine with English class and write a cause and effect paper on our bottle biology. The learning target for science was based around explaining change in an ecosystem. We structured this so students had both Jane and myself twice in one day!

Student Sample Drawing of Mutualism

Today I gave students the choice of how they wanted to demonstrate mutualism. Students needed to draw their example, but how they did it was up to them. Here is one example that someone made on the ipad.

Show Me App Examples

Here is our first try at using a screencasting app on our iPads called "Show Me." The following are two student examples in which they are trying to talk about commensalism. It's a start and for our first time I am good with what we got! We need to do a better job of learning the material before we run the app. Students have all they can do just to create the screencast.

Bottle Biology Movie

Here is a video that shows our students collecting biotic factors for their eco-columns.

7th Grade Science Ecology Learning In Action from bob wandel on Vimeo.

Bottle Biology Student Observations

We had students take observations of their bottle biology using iPads. We used a free app called "smart note free" to do this. Here is a link to one example.

Evidence of Student Work

Here is a movie showing some samples of student work. Some misconceptions needed to be addressed.

Social Contract Video

Here is a movie I created about our classroom management system. We take what we do from the "Capturing Kids Hearts" program.