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September 28, 2006
We had a an easy pop quiz, and then did a strike slip fault activity. We finished the period by watching a short 5 minute live internet stream on the Kobe Japan earthquake. No homework tonight. There will be a project for homework on Friday over the weekend. It is to make a 3D model of one of the types of faults like normal, reverse, or strike slip. There will be a substitute tomorrow.
Posted by Woolsey at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)
September 27, 2006
During class we had DEAR, drop everything and read for the first part of the class. I returned the tests to almost all my students except some of 1st period. We did a modeling clay activity that modeled the tension, compression, and shear behavior when rock undergoes that type of stress. We talked about how it can create an anticline, syncline, and other geologic structures. Following this activity we all had to answer what three types of stresses were demonstrated by the activity. One well behaved class was able to start the next fun activity, the rest were not. We will be having some new more strict behavioral consequences in all of my classes to reduce the disruptions.
Posted by Woolsey at 05:59 PM | Comments (0)
No homework. If you read this blog you will be privy to the fact that I am going to have a pop quiz on the bold vocabulary words that all my students have taken and put on their flash cards or into their notes. So if you can study the tectonic words from chapter 5.1 you should. I will do a short review before the quiz in case you don't or can not study tonight.
Posted by Woolsey at 05:47 PM | Comments (0)
September 26, 2006
Draw an example of 3 faults and label them, describe what is moving in which direction
Posted by Woolsey at 02:46 PM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2006
Today my students finished their chapter four exams, and then worked on a tectonic word puzzle. We then started reading the next chapter and review questions 1-4 on page 151. I then showed the class synclines, anti-clines, and talked about the different types of faults.
Posted by Woolsey at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)
September 23, 2006
We started the day by reviewing the correct answers to the quiz the previous day. I thought this was necessary because some students did not do so well on the quiz. The quiz was more difficult than the test for a reason, to make my students start to realize that they need to prepare for my assessments, and to do that through a less valuable vehicle like a quiz. Some students did great on my quiz. These students were studying and taking notes as per my instructions on a daily basis. I checked notes for a complete or incomplete grades from every student as I gave out the test. I assisted the students as best as possible through out the test and many did not finish. I am still contemplating letting all students take more time to complete the uncompleted segments of the test, depending on how many were unable to complete. We also went over the homework assignment, one side with the picture of the core will be graded, the other side will be added as extra credit. No homework over the weekend.
Posted by Woolsey at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)
September 21, 2006
I assigned a worksheet handout that we will review tomorrow. It is a two sided worksheet with a picture of the uppermost area of the Earth with the mid ocean ridge.
Posted by Woolsey at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)
Today my class first were given a tough quiz which was designed to prepare them for a test tomorrow. I did offer some assistance on the quiz to individuals that requested it. After we finished the quiz we worked through almost all the rest of the correct answers to the homework previously assigned.
Posted by Woolsey at 03:27 PM | Comments (0)
September 20, 2006
We had short classes today and wednesday we do "dear" which is drop everything and read. For the last part of the class, for some of the classes, we did an exercise where I chose students to answer questions about plate tectonics with a small reward. The students are still finishing the worksheets that I handed out on Monday.
Posted by Woolsey at 09:19 PM | Comments (0)
September 19, 2006
We performed another long white board activity. The students as they enter the room get their white boards and start answering the questions that are up on the Promethean board. I give out stars to the first 8-10 students that finish the first 5 questions first and correctly. We then go to the next set of 4 questions and do the same thing. After everybody is finished I have the students come up to the promethean board and write the correct answer. The students are chosen by random by picking their names from a cup. If they get the answer right they can choose from me either my right or left hand for a reward of either m&m candy or a jolly rancher. They then pick from the cup the name of the next student to come up to the Promethean board to repeat the process until we are all done. If the answer is not correct they do not get a reward, but can pick the next students name from the cup. There were multiple answer questions.
Next we review half of the homework hand out papers that I issued on Monday. We will finish correcting them tomorrow.
Lastly time permitting we did the sea floor spreading and a mid-ocean ridge,transform boundary, convergent boundary, and divergent boundary, subduction at a sea floor trench activity with the snickers bars. All in all it was a fun and sweet day. No new homework.
Posted by Woolsey at 05:28 PM | Comments (0)
The class performed a long white board activity in combination with a Promethean board activity on plate tectonics, convergent, divergent, transform and subduction plate tectonics. One of my classes was able to do the snickers bar activity which showed the different types of plate boundaries and what happens at them. Ask your child about the snicker bar activity. We also used an image that I have attached for additional demonstration of the process of subduction, and sea floor spreading. Essentially I am reviewing and preparing them for the chapter four test.
Posted by Woolsey at 05:20 PM | Comments (0)
This homework is three pages with two of them double sided. They are for reviewing sections 4.1, 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5 of chapter 4. We will be reviewing all the correct answers the next day in class. This assignment is not due till the 20th which we finish and correct in class.
Posted by Woolsey at 05:09 PM | Comments (0)
September 14, 2006
The class started out the period by writing down either vocabulary words and the corresponding definition, or questions and the corresponding answer on their flash cards. The question or word on the unlined side, and the definition or answer on the lined side. I had the activity displayed on the Promethean board. Next we did a sea floor spreading activity. I distributed a three page hand out that had a description of the activity and an exercise on the last page. I demonstrated the process of making horizontal colored lines on a white piece of paper, writing "start" at two places at the top of the paper and then folding the paper hot dog style then cutting it in half along the crease. We then took some construction paper and folded it into eighths hamburger style opened it back up folded it again hot dog style then made three cuts half way through the folded paper, once in the middle, and then 1/4 way from the top and 1/4 way from the bottom at the creases. We then opened up the construction paper and inserted the two lined pieces into the middle with the start end first and the lined sides facing towards each other. Finally we pulled the lined pieces through the middle cut, and then through the two end cuts one at each end. The activity demonstrated the process of molten rock pushing up from the mantle at the mid-ocean ridge to the surface, up and out to each side evenly and then subducted back into the mantle at either a continental plate or at an ocean trench. Some of the classes had time to view and discuss several of the sea floor spreading images that I had found on the internet.
Posted by Woolsey at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)
September 12, 2006
Agenda:
White warm up exercise involving questions about the topics they had been exposed to several times.
Promethean board exercise allowing each student if chosen at random out of a cup to write their best attempt at a good answer on the promethean board and to randomly choose the next student to do the same.
Reading In text page 123 - 129
Answer questions 1-5 page 129
I used images with most of the classes given the time to explain the processes. I will try to post these images tomorrow.
If I can down load these I will if not I will add the web addresses.
I must say to you all that your children and my students are precious, smart, and by and large making good grades. For those that have checked out grades before I was able to post them hang tight they will be there.
The amount of info that I show and go through with my students is not well represented in my blog simply because I am still in a learning curve in terms of posting some of the sophisticated sites and images that I use in class. Most of these are incredible, interesting, and engaging.
Posted by Woolsey at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)
My classes have slightly different schedules depending on their pace through the work. I am sorry for posting so late but I had commitments directly after the sixth grade teacher conference scheduling meetings. The following is a description of a combination of what all the classes were able to accomplish.
Agenda:
1. White board warm up exercise that started by having the students answer the recently learned topics displayed on the Promethean board by writing and drawing on their own personal white board. I then had each individual that was chosen at random from a name in a cup, to answer one of the questions that they had already worked through on their white board by using the active promethean writing pen. I started first, and then let each student write and choose the next name.
Reading:
Read trough text book pages 123 - 129
Questions:
page 129 questions 1 - 5
If done work book question on page 29
If all these class activities were completed we looked at several of incredible images that visually displayed what I was teaching and what I was trying to explain.
Posted by Woolsey at 09:10 PM | Comments (0)
September 08, 2006
1. We colored in shapes of the all the labeled continents.
2. We then cut the shapes out of the sheet of paper.
3. Next we attached the continents to colored paper and tried to fit them together by looking at the shape of the edge of each continent.
Posted by Woolsey at 05:06 PM | Comments (0)
September 07, 2006
Today we reviewed the correct answers to the questions on pages 44 and 45 of the workbook. After this review the students took a quiz on convection, conduction, and radiation. After the students finished their quizzes I demonstrated the relative densities of corn syrup, mineral water and isopropyl alcohol by dying them different colors and pouring the least dense fluid first into a graduated cylinder, then the most dense corn syrup dyed a different color on top of the isopropyl alcohol, and finally the mineral water. The most dense fluid moved through the less dense fluid and you could see the convection occurring due to the less dense fluid working it's way to be above the less dense fluid. No homework.
Posted by Woolsey at 04:27 PM | Comments (0)
September 06, 2006
We watched a video from Bill Nyle that was about the Earth's core layers, but especially about the molten layers or molten glass etc.
We used the promethean board as a class to answer questions on this topic. No homework.
Posted by Woolsey at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)
Hey students and parents. I tried to attach my digital lesson plan yesterday evening but when I did, I could not open them. I will find out why today and add them to my blog today. The lesson was essentially about the three heat transfer concepts that we have been studying for the last several days.
Posted by Woolsey at 05:26 AM | Comments (0)
September 01, 2006
The class period started with a little behavior management. I handed out $bills and copies of my classroom rules to each student, then reviewed the rules. We finished reading chapter 4.2 in the text and then answered the chapter review questions 1-5 as a group by having the question read and students volunteer to write the correct answer on the promethean board. I would correct any wrong answers or complete unfinished answers. I also drew numerous examples of the heat transfer process on the promethean. Finally we began reviewing the workbook answers on pages 44 and 45 in the same way. We will finish those on Tuesday.
Posted by Woolsey at 03:09 PM | Comments (0)
