Welcome to the Sciences Blog!
I'm Miss Carla, and my email address is carla@askeris.no
Unit 4
Describing motion, defining force
(Forces and resultants, by Qwertyxp2000, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International)
Unit 3
A matter of change
Week of 06/03/2017
Week of 27/02/2017
This week grade 6 will do the experiment needed for their summative assessment. The description of the assessment and the corresponding rubric have been shared with the students via Google Drive.
Week of 24/01/2017
Week of 16/01/2017
Week of 09/01/2017
Unit 2
"To infinity and beyond!"
Week of 12/12/2016
Week of 27/11/2016
Week of 21/11/2016
Week of 14/11/2016
Week of 07/11/2016
Week of 31/10/2016
Week of 24/10/2016
Week of 17/10/2016
Unit 1
The Nature of Scientific Work
Statement of Inquiry
Students will understand that scientific work allows us to study connections in the natural world.
This week we shared the summative assessment work with the class and reflected on Unit 1. We will start the new unit on the week of 17/10.
Week of 22/08/2016
Week of 15/08/2016
Unit 4
Describing motion, defining force
Statement of inquiry
Relationships among forces have consequences on the state of movement of objects.
Key Concept
Relationships
Related concepts
Movement, Consequences
Global context
Orientation in space and time
Inquiry questions
F: What are ways to describe the movement of an object?
C: How do forces affect the motion of objects?
D: Does gravity affect all objects the same way?
Week of 28/05/2017
Week of 15/05/2017
Week of 01/05/2017
Busy working on the summative assessment. This week the focus is on producing appropriate graphs.
Week of 15/05/2017
Students started working on their summative assessment. They have received copies of the description and the corresponding rubric. It will be about applying Newton's Laws of Motion into falling paper helicopters.
The summative assessment will be done mostly at school, although some finishing writing may be needed at home. The first step was to make the actual helicopters:
With any luck, we will be able to do the experiment on Thursday, May 18th or next week.
Here are also some useful videos:
Newton's Three Laws, with a bicycle
Newton's Laws: Crash Course
Week of 08/05/2017Here are also some useful videos:
Newton's Three Laws, with a bicycle
Newton's Laws: Crash Course
We continued exploring Newton's Laws of Motion. This week, the focus was on the Third. Here are some pictures (and a video!) of the experiment we conducted.
Week of 01/05/2017
For the past weeks, Grade 6 students have been busy exploring the relationships between forces and motion. They completed a series of hands-on activities to investigate Newton's Law of Motion.
Here are some cool movies of the experiment conducted to test Second Law:
Of course, we also worked individually:
although group discussions always find a way in science lessons:
Unit 3
A matter of change
Statement of Inquiry
Transformations in the state of matter involve energy exchanges that affect the attraction among the atoms that make up matter.
Key concepts
Change
Change
Related concepts
Transformations, Energy
AOI / Global context
Scientific and technical innovation
Scientific and technical innovation
Inquiry questions
F: What are the different properties of matter?
C: How do energy transfers affect the properties of matter?
D: Can physical changes in matter be understood only in terms of temperature changes?
This week, Grade 6 students worked towards their summative assessment. Due to an off-site meeting, the final report is now due on Monday, March 13th.
Next Monday we will start a new unit!
Next Monday we will start a new unit!
Week of 27/02/2017
The past weeks, Grade 6 students have continued working on changes in state of matter. We did hands-on activities followed by reading comprehension activities to help develop collaborative work skills as well as self-management skills.
Here are some interesting pictures about the evaporation lab. Can you guess which paper was under a bag containing hot water?
These are the pictures of the activity we did to investigate condensation:
And here are the ones about the activity to investigate freezing:
Lastly, here are the pictures of the activity we conducted to learn about melting. In it the students needed to design their own experiment to see how melting could occur faster:
This week grade 6 will do the experiment needed for their summative assessment. The description of the assessment and the corresponding rubric have been shared with the students via Google Drive.
The summative assessment has been announced. We will work mostly at school, as it involves an experiment. You can find the document here.
This week, we finished the activities about state of matter and we started to look at how heat is conducted. This will be connected to how energy is transferred during changes of states, which we'll explore next week.
Week of 16/01/2017
This week, Grade 6 continued to explore the motion of molecules in different states of matter. For example, we experimented with the effect of temperature on gases. Here are some pictures:
Week of 09/01/2017
This week, we started a new unit. The first activity allowed us to investigate why water behaves the way it does. We even had time to play a little too!
Now, we are focusing on what affects the motion of molecules. With a simple experiment involving food coloring, we started looking at the effects of temperature in liquids. Here is the result. Can you guess which cup had --before adding blue and yellow food coloring -- cold water and which one, warm?
Unit 2
"To infinity and beyond!"
Statement of Inquiry
Models allow scientists to understand the movements and interactions that change our Universe.
Key concepts
Time, place and space
Time, place and space
Related concepts
Models, Movement, Interactions
Models, Movement, Interactions
AOI / Global context
Orientation in space and time
Orientation in space and time
Inquiry questions
F: What are the components of the Solar system?
C: How is the universe structured?
D: Are the economic costs of space exploration justifiable?
Week of 12/12/2016
As the end of the unit arrives, we focused on analyzing what the real challenges to space exploration are. Is it technology or is it human nature?
Here is a video that guided us in our discussion:
I wish you all grade 6 families a happy and relaxing winter break. See you next year!
Week of 27/11/2016
In preparation for tasks 2 and 3 of the summative assessment, we worked in groups trying to decide what elements would be a priority in a moon hike towards a base after a crash landing. Unfortunately, our priorities were different to those from the people at NASA. Ask your child about the exercise!
We also watched some videos that sparked some interesting discussions:
Week of 21/11/2016
Extremely short week this week. We only had Science lessons on Monday, when we started a group activity pretending to be stranded on the Moon. This activity will help us prepare for task 2 of the summative assessment, which is due Thursday, December 1st.
This week we've been reviewing what we learned about the solar system. We watched two very interesting videos:
The deadline for Task 2 of the summative assessment has been announced. The project has to be done on Thursday, December 1st.
Week of 07/11/2016
This week, students in Grade 6 have been reading a lot about the solar system in preparation for task 1 of the summative assessment.
Week of 31/10/2016
The summative assessment has been introduced. The first task is due on Thursday, Nov. 10th. Please follow the links below to access the documents describing the tasks and rubric.
Week of 24/10/2016
As part of the UN Day celebrations, we analyzed how international cooperation has made possible space exploration. As homework, students will need to find out information about the International Space Station.
We also started looking at how the concept of the universe was formed through history. We learned about the geocentric model of the universe during ancient times and the changes brought by the scientific revolution since the 16th century.
We also enjoyed the following video:
Solar System 101
We also tried to watch this video, but there were some technical difficulties. I recommend you to watch it!
Family portrait
We also enjoyed the following video:
Solar System 101
We also tried to watch this video, but there were some technical difficulties. I recommend you to watch it!
Family portrait
Week of 17/10/2016
On Monday, we had a very special visit from scientists working at Bayer, Drs. Christine Ellignsen and Alex Papple.
We asked many questions about their research (killing cancer cells!) and discussed more general issues such as being a scientist as a career, what motivates and inspires them, and how animal testing is done.
After the talks, we even got to do some experiments to generate carbon dioxide!
Here are some pictures:
On Tuesday and Thursday, we started the new unit. Here you can find some key terms we'll be working on.
The Nature of Scientific Work
Statement of Inquiry
Students will understand that scientific work allows us to study connections in the natural world.
Key concepts
Connections, Communication
Connections, Communication
Related concepts
Evidence
Evidence
AOI / Global context
Scientific and technical innovation
Scientific and technical innovation
Inquiry questions
Factual: What is the scientific method? Why is evidence so important for scientists?
Conceptual: How can we recognize what is and what is not science? What role does communication play in science?
Debatable: Can science be done for good or evil?
IMPORTANT!
IMPORTANT!
- The summative assessment due date is Monday, October 10th.
- Here is (again) the guideline for citing created by the Alamo Regional Science and Engineering Fair (arase.org).
Week of 10/10/2016
This week we shared the summative assessment work with the class and reflected on Unit 1. We will start the new unit on the week of 17/10.
Week of 26/09/2016
In preparation for the summative assessment, here is a list of the key terms to be used with definitions (in English and Norwegian).
Week of 19/09/2016
Grade 6 students started working on their summative assessment. On Wednesday, during a cover lesson, we had the opportunity to talk about academic integrity after some students found on the Internet complete projects similar to the topics they can do their research. Here is a guideline created by the Alamo Regional Science and Engineering Fair (arase.org) that provides nice examples of how to cite other peoples' work.
Week of 12/09/2016
The focus of this week was also on the steps of the scientific method. The activities were designed to help them in their summative assessment, which is due the week after the break.
Next week will have time in class to work in the mock project. However, the poster will have to be done mostly at home.
Week of 5/09/2016
We keep working on the different steps of the scientific method using thought experiments. We have been exploring what characteristics are common to well formulated hypotheses. We will continue with the different types variables an experiment can present.
Some of the students have already forgot the name of their assigned scientist. The help them remember, here is the complete list.
Please let me know if you are not able to access all the documents I have linked in the blog.
Week of 29/08/2016
Week of 22/08/2016
We started working on the scientific method in more detail this week. Students were asked to write detailed procedures to save Sam, the worm that cannot swim but likes to sail. The procedure had to be simple and clear enough so anyone could follow and repeat the experiment.
We also started looking at how observations (pun intended) are made and how evidence is processed. For this activity, the students had to evaluate whether Marty the Martian was innocent or guilty of not doing his job. Ask your child about the activity!
Week of 15/08/2016
The first day of classes we focused on establishing routines and expectations. One important part of our routines is the initial reflection, in which a student presents to her/his classmates what we covered in the last class. The reflection is a good exercise for many reasons. For instance, it helps the students to be on top of what we are learning. It also allows bringing up possible confusions about the activities. Moreover, the students practice to stand in front of the class and speak to an audience.
The rest of the week we worked on two activities to start thinking about how science work and how scientists deal with new ideas.
