A Year in Review: A Science Teachers Reflection: Quarter 4

The last quarter of the year is all about plants and eco-regions, biodiversity and water systems and of course Texas Eco-regions. It was a busy quarter of making terrariums, then compost bins from them, an Ecosystem Edcamp that was grade level science, lots of games from Jenga to Taboo to Brainiac, A summit on the human impact on Texas Eco-regions, a summit on water issues and creating aquifers. All'n'all what is usually a boring topic turned out to be fun and invigorating with weathering walks and walk-abou'ts collecting leaves. Lots of planting and outdoor activities. But, for GT it began with a 6 week experimental design project about plant tropisms.

Nature Walkabout & Leaf Dichotomous Key-Students went on a nature walk and collected leaves while discussing their size, shape, and outer covering to determine what plants live locally here in Texas and why they look the way they do. Then they created dichotomous keys using a set of leaves they collected.

Plant Experimental Design: Tropisms- Gt students were asked, in groups of 3-4 to design an experiment that would support one of the main plant tropisms: photropism, hydrotropism, geotropism, thigmotropism or thermotropism. They had six weeks to determine their results, many ended before this point but all the groups managed to gather solid data and write thorough lab reports.

Terrariums- Students created 2-liter bottle terrariums using the seeds we planted during our germination lab activity.

Composting Bins- Students created Compost bins from their terrariums after they had perished and added some interesting food items from home to watch decomposition in motion.

Eco-regions Edcamp-7th grade Science-This was a grade level science Edcamp each of the science classrooms was a different Ecosystem and students ran the edcamp becoming experts at their region and while some students chose to run each individual discussion the other students were free to roam from room to room to get the information they needed for the review.

Jenga: Peruvian Food Chain-To demonstrate an ecological cascade students used a game (I learned about at CAST, but cut out all the pieces and assembled the game together) using Jenga. It was very visual and very memorable for the students.

Conference: Texas Eco-regions Investor Presentation- Each group chose an eco-region of Texas and had to convince me, an investor that there location was the best place for me to invest my money in and reside with my family.

Aquifer Creation-Why is clean water so important?- students were given supplies and no directions and were asked to created an aquifer and to demonstrate the proliferation of pollution into the area.

Frog Dissection- Students dissected frogs at the end of the year so we could spend a week reviewing all the systems of the human body one more time.

Star Wars and Catastrophic Events plus a little WED- Rather then discussing catastrophic events on Earth for Star Wars Day May 4th, Mat the 4th be with you students researched the planets in the Star Wars universe and the weathering, erosion, and deposition as well as the catastrophic events that occur on them and how they shape the planet.

Bear and Tardis Mosaic- after the frog dissections students solved Rubik's cubes (600 of them) in order to use one side for two different mosaics it was a fun end of the year activity. Students love to solve Rubik's cubes and we got to tie math and art together for a spectacular display. I ordered the sets from You Can Rubik's and they were shipped back, I wish we could keep them but alas off they went. But, definitely would like to get some donations and keep up the frame all year and switch out the designs quarterly or by unit.