BEach Clean Up Success!

HI All!

With 28 Scofield students in attendance, our school represented the largest group at the beach clean up once again! Great job gang!

Here is a picture of the Black team students who attended in action!



While I was there I was able to see one of the newest additions to the SoundWaters family, a very young diamondback terrapin hatchling! It was hatched at Soundwaters. There are two other eggs that may hatch soon!



Have a great weekend!

Mr. Forde :-)

Finished Eco-Jars!

The planning is over and the eco-jars were completed! They were soaking up the afternoon sun (the source of energy for most ecosyetems) and were all looking good! We will journal about their status over the next few weeks and discuss changes that occur and try and figure out whether the producer, consumers, decomposers and abiotic factors (the four main components of an ecosystem) are in balance. We will discover if our in puts lead to the right processes which lead to the appropriate outputs! :-)

I had fun creating these but I will admit it was a tad chaotic at times and a bit dirtier at the end of the day than usual! The classes did a great job!! :-)

What did you think about the activity? Share your story of the creation! :-)

Mr. F :-)

Planning our eco-jars

Food Web links!

Hi All!

Here are the food web game links from class.

Mr. F :-)

1) Game 1

2) Game 2

3) Game 3

Let me know how you did and what you think!

Mr. F :-)

Eco- Jars!

Hi All!

This week we will plan and create eco-jars. These sealed ecosystems will allow us to think about the abiotic and abiotic factors that we would need to include to ensure success in a sealed jar that will NOT be opened once it is sealed!

Here is one might look like in the planning stages.



Please bring in large mouth jars that could support an ecosystem.

See you tomorrow!

Mr. Forde :-)

Living or not and population study.

Hi All!

Here are a few shots from a couple of activities we accomplished this week.

The first images are from our 1/2 day wednesday activity known as Living, Non-living, Once Living. The teams did a great job deciding which words belong on each list. It wasn't as easy as it sounds.







Another interesting activity happened today. We learned the terms biotic and abiotic and the we tried our hand at a population study. We headed outside and looked for different tree populations on part of our campus. Here are some had working students trying to identify their trees.





Let me know what you thought of these activities!

Mr. F :-)

Sewer Lice!

What did you think of this activity?

Did it make you think?

Mr. Forde :-)

Original Mealworm experiments!

HI All!

Last week went by so quickly!

We discussed and learned more about testable and researchable questions. We reviewed our last experiment and designed a new one of our own. On friday we tested them out and collected our own original data. Great job Black Team! After 5 periods of original experiments I was pretty beat! :-)

Here are some images of the kids at work. I am sorry that I could not get you all!



Next week we will talk about LIFE. What is it? How do you know something is alive? The we will start covering some ecology basics.


Mr. F :-)

Tell me about your experiment for tomorrow!

Hi Black team!

Let me know what you are doing tomorrow!!

Post your ideas here for all to see!




See you tomorrow!

Mr. Forde :-)

Mealworm Experiment - 9/8/09

Here we are conducting our recent (today) mealworm experiment where we tried to determine whether or not mealworms prefer water, salt water, sugar water or a vinegar solution. Ask you local black team scientist about their findings and why they think things turned out the way they did!

Week one- Black Team Science!

Hi All,

We had a great start to science class this year! I have really enjoyed getting to meet the students.

We started off by getting to know one another and setting up our binders and interactive science lab notebooks. The students also learned how to use this blog and the format for producing current event reports for science class. We then discussed whether or not we possessed the characteristics of a scientist. I believe that most students were convinced that they actually do have the traits of a scientist!



We next focused on descriptive writing and finding details in class and then observed meal worms and generated an "I notice/I wonder chart".

See the movie below.

Next week we will conduct and experiment that I have designed with the meal worms and write a lab report. We will then learn about the differences between testable (investigable) questions and researchable questions. The students will then generate a testable question related to the meal worms and decide on an investigation that they would like to conduct in teams.

I am looking forward to a relaxing weekend but can't wait to see what we will create next week!

Enjoy the 3 day weekend!

Mr Forde :-)

Mealworm Observation- Kids in action.