Without You Here

It may be graduation day, but there is already work being done to get our school ready for you next year! Do you recognize your classroom?

Biology - Crayfish Dissection

Photo accessed at http://www.aa.psu.edu/biology/crayfish/crayfish/used/tail.jpg on March, 28, 2011

 If you find a good website for crayfish anatomy, copy and paste the link in a comment here. Thanks!

pH Lab in Chemistry

Here are some shots from today's chemistry lab. Today we ran tests on seven different chemicals and tomorrow we will talk about pH, pOH, acids and bases.

Owl Nest

Check out this cool live webcam.

Monday, Feb. 14th - Biology

Scan through Ch. 23, section 1 in your Biology books. Notice that there are six main adaptations that plants had to make to live successfully on land:

• absorbing nutrients with roots, 
• preventing water loss, 
• reproducing on land using pollen, 
• transporting materials with vascular tissue, 
• protecting embryos with seeds and 
• attracting pollinators with flowers.)

Pretend that you are a salesman, selling one or more of these adaptations to plants. Make an advertisement, using any computer program that you want (or you may draw it on paper), selling the adaptation you have chosen. You may want to read more about it in the book (Ch. 23, section 1). Your advertisement must include the following things:

• a picture (probably of a plant who either needs or has the adaptation you chose)
• A name for your product (the adaptation - but be creative!)
• The price you are selling your adaptation for
• A short explanation of why a plant needs the adaptation you are selling.

If you made your ad on the computer, turn it in to the dropbox with your name in the file name. If you made your ad by hand, turn it in to the sub. If you aren't finished when the bell rings, turn it in tomorrow.

Monday, Feb.14th in Chemistry

Each student needs to:

1. Pick any “Science World” magazine from the stacks on my desk.

2. Choose an article that is interesting to you and read through it.

3. Now choose any of the “Science News” magazines over by the frogs.

Read through any of the articles (if it is long, scan through it). You will have to share these magazines because there aren’t as many of them.

4. Answer the following questions on paper (you may use the colored scratch paper):

         a. How would you compare these aspects of the two articles:

                  1. types of words and sentence structure

                  2. use of pictures or lack of pictures and picture size compared

                        to the article size

                  3. Creative title or lack of a creative title

                  4. Use of quoting someone else

                  5. Length of article.

         c. Who do you think was the intended audience for each article?

         d. Why do you think the Science World article was written and arranged the way that it was? What

             about the Science News article?

Turn these observations in. We will use them in a discussion/project tomorrow. Neatly return your magazines to the stacks they came from.

The sub has your next assignment.