What’s Happening in Science this week – 10/20 – 10/23

This week we have began our Animal Adaptation unit. This unit is being led by my fabulous student teacher, Mrs. Sartin. We will have our next notebook check on Monday of next week (10/26.) This will cover notebook pages 52 – 57. We will be testing on Wednesday, November 4th.

Tuesday – Today we viewed an Animal Adaptations PowerPoint and completed a booklet. This booklet is our daily week grade for the week. This is notebook page 52.

Wednesday – Today we read 3 passages about giraffes, elephants, and geckos. We identified the structural adaptations that helped it to survive. This is page 53. We also completed Day 1 – Day 3 of adaptations warm-up. This was on page 54 of our notebook.

Thursday – We will review the warm-ups and finish NB 53 Read It. We will be reading and describing the structural adaptations of agave plants and earthworms.

Friday – Today we are completing our Tech It page on NB 55.

** These resources were purchased from the Science Penguins teachers pay teachers store. The link is here.

What’s Happening this week — 10/12 to 10/16

This week we are learning about life cycles. We will not be testing on this — we will be taking a notebook grade for this standard.

Monday – Today we are learning about invertebrates and vertebrates. We will be putting this sheet on notebook 46.

We will create this page on NB 47 about vertebrates. This is a page in progress.

Tuesday – Today we glued in this page on NB 48. It is our information page about life cycles, and we will be revisiting it throughout the week.

NB 49 – We created the following foldable about incomplete metamorphosis. We were learning about the life cycle of a grasshopper.

Here are a couple of great examples from my 2nd period.

Wednesday – Today we are learning about the life cycle of the praying mantis. We will be creating NB page 50.

Thursday – Today we are learning about complete metamorphosis. We will be learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. We will create NB 51.

Friday – Students that are finished will get to participate in a STEM challenge. Students that are not finished will finish. Notebooks are to be turned in by the end of class. This will be a test grade.

These notebook pages are available for purchase in the Science Penguin Teachers Pay Teachers store. The link is here.

What’s Happening in Science this week – 9/14 – 18

We are continuing to work on our Plant Unit. We will be testing September 29.

Monday – Today we read 3 passages about plants. These passages are our theme about plants – importance of plants, needs of plants, and how plants reproduce. We picked out the key details in each and wrote them on a graphic organizer. These can be found on our interactive notebook pages 18 – 21.

Tuesday – Today we watched two study jams – Plants with Seeds and Photosynthesis. We described and illustrated what we knew/learned about this in our notebook. This can be found on notebook pages 22. We also illustrated a page about the needs of plants.

  
Wednesday – Today the kids really impressed me!! I had really debated having them do today’s activity, and they all aced it!! I’m going to step up my game — these kids can handle it!!! We matched photo cards with their description, and recorded it on their notebook page 24.

Thursday – Today we analyzed a picture of a houseplant, and recorded our thoughts on our graphic organizer. We started a notebook page Plants we eat — and we will finish it on Monday.

** We will stay in homerooms tomorrow due to Homecoming Festivities.

Trying something new — Plants Science Stations

Every year toward the end of the school year, I begin to start thinking about things I can do to improve my classroom for the next school year. My class website, my blog, science notebooks, etc. have all came out of this process.  Throughout this school year I’ve tried to do group work and labs, but group work is an area I’ve struggled with in my classroom. I’ve had a hard time letting go of the reins and giving the students some ‘control’ over their learning. We have so much to cover — and I was scared I would not be able to cover all of our standards. After finishing our standards for 4th grade and reviewing for our Aspire test, I decided it would be a great time to test out Science Stations in my classroom. I’m a big follower of The Science Penguin, a fellow classroom teacher who blogs and makes resources for classrooms all over the world. I purchased her big stations pack this year, and decided that we would begin using them in Science. Her teachers pay teachers store is located here. I set up stations — for plants I decided we would have six. I purchased these buckets from Dollar Tree earlier in the year.      I arranged our desks into six groups. Each group comes in and sits together during class.    At the beginning of every class we have a quick mini-lesson. After they finish their stations, they have a notebook page to create relating to their lesson.  We have 6 stations relating to plants. These stations came from the Science Penguins Science Stations Unit. Station 1 – Read It. In this station, students have 3 passages to read. They are reading about needs of plants, reproduction of plants, and importance of plants. They are recording important details about plants on their graphic organizer. Pictured below are students working in this station.        Station 2 – Tech It. In this station students are watching two scholastic study jams and taking quizzes. Afterwards they are describing what they learned and illustrating the concepts.        Station 3 – Explain It. In this station students have a table about an experiment involving tomato plants and varying degrees of sunlight. Students are writing three observations and concluding the results of the experiment.    Station 4 – Analyze It. Students are analyzing a picture of a houseplant.    Station 5 – Sort It. Students sort different cards into three categories – characteristics of animals, plants, or if they are both characteristics.    Station 6 – Explore It. In this station, students are looking at plants in food coloring and observing how water is transported.     I’ve been inspired by the eagerness and the quality of work that my 4th graders have put into our stations. Can’t wait to implement this next year with all of our standards. It’s been a great year!! I’m so grateful for the opportunity to teach the 4th graders at HES Science. 🙂 Love,  Mrs. Goggans

Animal Adaptations — 4/6 to 4/8

For the next two weeks we are trying to finish up our last standard for 4th grade Science. We are working from our Week 22 newsletter – Competition and Adaptation at the beginning of the week.

Monday –

We are reading and highlighting from our Newsletter today. Students will be able to use their newsletter on their quiz on Wednesday. It will consist of 10 questions.

Tuesday –

Today we are watching a study jam on animal adaptations. Afterwards, we are completing a PowerPoint/Booklet on Animal Adaptations. This is a great resource — I bought it from the Science Penguin here. This booklet will be our Daily Work grade for the week.

Wednesday –

We are taking our Week 22 newsletter and starting to learn about life cycles.

Warm Blooded/Cold Blooded — Science Notebook Page

This week we have been focusing on invertebrates and vertebrates, and today I introduced the new topic of warm blooded and cold blooded animals. This is our next to last 4th grade standard that we are to learn this year (can you believe it?!). Not only do I want the kids to understand the concept, but I want them to be able to identify what animals fall into each category.

We viewed a slideshow that hopefully helped to illustrate as I explained to the class. Then, we created a science notebook page to help them understand the concept.

Here is a fabulous student example!! I love how creative our 4th graders are on their pages!!

I always tell my students that I am not an expert ‘drawer’ by any means. I LOVE our notebooks, and I feel like it is such a great way to help us have a concrete example of our learning. Some pages I do better at than others … I HAVE to show my fail from today!!! I was in a hurry to get my illustrations done, and this poor cow below suffered!!! Many students sympathetized with my lack of drawing ability, but I heard some comments like is that a sheepdog?! And my personal favorite .. That looks like a Dalmatian with udders!! Ha!! You win some and lose some!!

Here is the infamous drawing. It began as a rabbit .. and became a cow. Or tried to be a cow. 🙂

Our test is on Friday. It will cover our Week 24 newsletter and our study guide.

Thanks for reading,

Mrs. Goggans

What’s Happening the Week of 3/23 – 3/27 (Week 24 Newsletter)

This week we are counting down until Spring Break which is next week!! We have 2 standards left to cover, and this week we are knocking one off the list.

This week we are studying Week 24 newsletter. We are highlighting our newsletter for our test, and we also have a study guide to help us prepare for our test on Friday.

Monday – We will be reading page 1 of our newsletter and we are looking at our vocabulary/study guide. We are focusing today on the students being able to define invertebrates (animals without backbones) and vertebrates (animals with backbones.) Students will also have to name 2 of each on their test on Friday. We are also working on the invertebrate/vertebrate sheet below.

Tuesday –

Today we are reviewing our vocab/study guide. We are reading the top of pages 2 and 3 of our newsletter. We are identifying vertebrates/invertebrates in our Science Notebook. The page is pictured below.

Wednesday – We are focusing on warm blooded and cold blooded animals today. We will be creating a Science notebook page. Our schedule will be altered today due to a program by our Afterschool children.

Thursday – We are finishing our newsletter, reviewing our Study Guide, and we are sorting animals by warm blooded or cold blooded in our Science Notebook.

Friday – We are testing on our Week 24 newsletter and our Study Guide today.

I hope everyone has a great spring break and comes back ready to finish the rest of the school year!!!

Halloween Science Activities — 10/31/14

We incorporated a pumpkin into our Science class on Halloween. First, we learned about the life cycle of the pumpkin. We completed a sheet from teachers pay teachers that is located here. Then, we watched a short video clip of a pumpkin farm. The video was fantastic — I’m also including the link here.

Afterward, I had students estimate the number of pumpkin seeds that came out of the pumpkin. Surprisingly, our actual number was 505! Several students said 500 — they were VERY close!!

Next up .. We erupted our pumpkin!! The kids loved it, and I’m including the instructions here.

Digestion Lab 11/20/13

Thank goodness for Pinterest!! I have found the cutest labs and activities for our 4th graders to do!! Today’s lab modeled digestion. Each child received a sandwich bag and 2 saltine crackers. We zipped our bags closed, and mashed our crackers together to model mechanical digestion. Mechanical digestion is when we chew our food up!! Next, we poured a small amount of Sierra Mist in each bag. This represented chemical digestion which is the stomach acid helping to break down the food into simpler compounds to digest. This lab helped us to ‘see’ digestion in action!! 🙂

Digestion Lab 11/20/13

Homeroom!! Notice my ‘selfie’ in this pic!! As we added the stomach acid (Sierra Mist) it exploded all over my shirt!! Oh well!! Fun Science!!!