Stimulating Science Simulations

Today we took the 5th grade students to Agape for an environmental educational experience.  What a blast!  If you have never gone into the woods with a group of urban kids, you have no idea what you're missing.  They get excited about the simplest things! Here's a brief run-down of our day and some pictures too. On the bus ride, students pointed out deforestation taking place and we took note of tornado damage that occurred in the north part of our city last year.  Believe it or not, most of the kids hadn't seen the damage even though it is in our own city.

It has rained every Friday in the past 3 weeks.  Finally, we got through a Friday morning without rain and my 3rd grade classes were able to go out to the garden.  We worked for about 80 minutes and cleared out most of the clover that was growing.  We had a terrible time clearing out runners from Bermuda grass last year but apparently we did a good job of it since there was very little to be found growing this year. Besides getting the garden mostly weed free, tons of learning took place.  The 3rd graders did a great job working carefully with their tools and clearing their patch of the garden.  They worked to spread the different types of soil that they found so there would be a healthy combination.  One area seemed to have more clay than the rest, so they worked to spread that around.

Some of my favorite science lessons are the ones when kids get a chance to be kids, dare I say it - like the "good 'ole days".  Today was one of those days.  Meet "Froggie". We discovered him in our student garden today. The weather was beautiful and we have been learning about weathering, erosion, and deposition.  I pulled out my popsicle sticks that are marked every cm. with a different color and used for measuring erosion on a mountain model.

I've spent a day and a half working with the North Carolina team and teams from 40 states along with Washington, DC on the charge to build capacity for state science education.  As such, we are looking closely at the Framework for Science  and the Next Generation of Science Standards .

I'm a firm believer in the concept "don't reinvent the wheel".   blog post that compares/contrasts the Common Core Standards and NC Essential Standards. Thomas Feller, Jr. wrote a nice In a follow up post, he shares a common core scavenger hunt  .

Geography was never my thing.  It definitely shows when it comes to teaching about landforms.  I just don't get into it like I should.  Well, admitting your weakness is the first step toward overcoming it.  At least I hope it is.  This year I am trying something new.  Instead of hanging a lovely bulletin board display on the wall, it will spend some time on the floor.  That's right, the floor!  Here's the plan.

Traditionally, I have my 3rd grade students draw pictures of the moon for an entire month.  We usually do this project after learning about the phases of the moon.  This year I had a thought.