Exploring Our Fluid Earth

e.g. I am wondering how to...

e.g. I am wondering how to...

I taught this activity to my 9th grade Marine Science students. Attached is the worksheet that I handed out. The crayfish statement is in reference to the crayfish experiment that one of my Science Research Elective students is doing.

Thank you to everyone for your comments and information on this activity. I did this last year with my students but haven't done it this year yet so the modifications and tie-in ideas are great. My students liked fish printing a lot last year but I want to emphasize the function part a bit more this year. Will update after I teach this activity.

This lesson went fairly well. I changed it up a little and assigned each of the six "mis-statements " to different groups, where they discussed them, rewrote them on sentence strips, presented them to the class and posted them in the room.

Attached is my lesson on scientific language. I used a gallery walk for students to engage in investigating and categorizing the suggesting statements as one of the 3 target terms. They did so by moving from poster to poster, writing their answers and descriptions on each. At the end, we had a whole-class discussion about dissenting ideas on the posters.

I had an interesting guest speaker from the Department of Aquatic Resources come visit my middle school classes before doing the Activity Questions. He had a colorful slide show about fish around Hawaii. I also included a DVD about Hanuama Bay which tied into our Earth Science island geology curriculum. We spent about 1 1/2 classes prepping for the TSI Lesson. I purchased about 10 extra fish from Tamashiro's market. We found that the acrylic paint was a bit too thick for the details on the Gyotaku print that we wanted to identify so we thinned it with water.

This lesson seems like it would be a lot of fun to do if I could figure out a way to connect it to Earth science and what we are covering now.... space. Any ideas?

The students and I had a great time with this activity. I believe it is important to stress to the students that individual bacteria (or any organism for that matter) do not adapt to a changing environment by making themselves different. Rather, a different genotype already exists in the population that is more advantageous in the new environment and this genetic make-up becomes selected for.

Finished this lesson today and it worked much better than I guessed it might! I would definitely do this again, but probably earlier in the year.

This was really a lot of fun to do the goytaku. We used both real fish and the rubber fish. They turned out great!

e.g. I am wondering how to...

This activity was a create way to clarify common terms that are used in science. I think it would be a great activity to do in the beginning of the year and the only thing I would change is try to make it more interactive in some way or have students come up with their own examples. Overall, good activity and I will most likely use it again.

This lesson helped my students to be able to identify and explain the difference between a theory, hypothesis and opinion. I think majority of my students understand the opinion part already; however, I think they were able to understand more of the difference between a theory and hypothesis.

This lesson helped my students to understand the importance of form and function of fish for survival. Last year I taught my students life science and had them do their own "fashion-a-fish" project, but I think they were able to understand more of the content through this lesson. I wasn't able to have my students do the fish printing activity yet, but I'm hoping to do it next week before spring break. :)

My students really liked this activity. One group had 0 typical and 0 mutated after the second generation. They explained to me that they understood the concept of the activity, but they wanted to know if they could roll for second attempt to see if they could at least get to the third generation. :) I also liked how a graph was incorporated in this activity. It helped the students visually see the comparison between the survival and reproduction of the typical and mutated bacteria.

I started the lesson by asking them to define evolution and to write what they think causes evolution to occur. Their responses were very basic and for the causes pretty much non-existent. They enjoyed "killing bacteria", but when asked to compare result, predictions, etc, they really struggled. I was pretty frustrated getting them to make the connection between the activity and evolution.

Idea: Try modifying the parameters for which numbers on the dice result in survival or death. Narrow the difference between how many survive. Even a small advantage to one group results in an increase in the proportions of that trait growing to dominate the population.

I've attached my modified worksheet. I did not include which paper clip was which group. You'll have to decide this before you start, as well as how many of each group you want to begin with. Think of your scenario/story, and the supplies of paper clips you have on hand.

attached is my lesson plan for the fish printing activity :)

Here is my lesson plan.