Week at a Glance: Week of 11/30 – 12/4

Monday 11/30: Setup Winter Term INBs, Earth Science Pre-Assessment

Tuesday 12/1: Worldwide Pattern of Volcanoes, Worldwide Pattern of Earthquakes

Wednesday 12/2: Earthquakes, Volcanoes, and World Elevation

Thursday 12/3: Continental Drift

Friday 12/4: No School – Fall Trimester Final Grading Day

Announcements: Welcome to the last week of the fall trimester!  Being that I was gone one day last week to take care of my sick daughter, we were able to finish everything except for putting together our new interactive notebooks for the winter trimester.  We will be doing this on Monday before we dive into our new earth science unit.  I will be extending the fall trimester grading deadline by one day.  If your student wants to make up anything from his/her notebook (through page 75), they have until the end of school on Thursday 12/3 in order to do so.  As a reminder, students are allowed to take their notebooks home at any time.  I ask that they sign them out of the room when they take them home to keep track of them.  These notebooks are an active portfolio of their work, research, and feedback.  Because we actively use them each and every day – often referring back to work that they have done over several weeks – they stay in the classroom unless students sign them out.  In my experience, and in the experience of the other science teachers as well, they tend to get lost otherwise.  As always, please let me know if you have any questions or need anything.  I hope you have a great week!

KK

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Week at a Glance: Week of 11/23 – 11/27

Monday 11/23: Light – Particle or Wave Arguments & Research (71), One-on-one Science Conferences

Tuesday 11/24: Light – Particle or Wave Rebuttal (72), EWIT Test Review, One-on-one Science Conferences

Wednesday 11/25: EWIT Post-Assessment Test (73), One-on-one Science Conferences, Setup Winter Term INBs

Thursday 11/26: No School – Thanksgiving Break

Friday 11/27: No School – Thanksgiving Break

Announcements: For those of you who were able to make it to student-led conferences last week, I hope that they went well for you and your student.  I enjoyed seeing so many conferences happening, and was happy to answer questions for those who were able to be there. As you can imagine, it was an extremely busy week between conferences on Thursday and putting on the Barnes & Noble fundraiser with the WEB leaders on Friday and Saturday.  We will use this week to finish up the unit on Electricity & Waves, and get our new notebooks setup for the winter trimester.  I was hoping to have been able to finish it last week, but some labs took longer than expected, and I planned a bit more than we were able to get through.  As I mentioned last week, please have your student bring his or her winter term interactive notebook asap.  We will use part of Wednesday to set these up.  If you only have a spiral, I will gladly exchange the spiral for one of my composition books.  One of the biggest reasons that I require composition books is because pages fall out of spirals far too easily.  If we have time, we will also start our Earth Science unit with our pre-assessment, but at this point I am planning to start that unit the day we come back from the short Thanksgiving break.  When we return we will have four days left in the fall trimester.  Students have until Wednesday, December 2 to make any improvements to notebook scores, or take any outstanding tests or assessments that they still have to make up.  Throughout the week I will be having short one-on-one science conferences with each student to discuss their progress so far this term, and their goals for the rest of the school year.  I hope to have these finished by the end of the week, but if I don’t finish them, then we will conclude them before the end of the following week. If you have any questions or need anything let me know.  Have a great week!

KK

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Week at a Glance: Week of 11/16 – 11/20

Monday 11/16: SLC prep (Science portion of SLC Table of Contents), Scientific Models (64), Types of Waves (65), Modeling Light Waves (66). Students need to bring in winter term INB by the end of the week.

Tuesday 11/17: SLC prep – Science Fall Reflection (74), the Hidden Spectrum HW (67), Electromagnetic Waves Notes (68) Modeling Sound Waves (69).

Wednesday 11/18: SLC Prep – Science Goals (75), Mechanical Waves Notes (70), Light – Particle or Wave Arguments (71)

Thursday 11/19: Light – Particle or Wave Rebuttal (72), EWIT Post-Assessment (73), practice Science portion of SLC, Winter-term INB is due.

Friday 11/20: No School – Conferences the evening before.

Announcements: Hello everyone!  We have Student-Led Conferences this week on Thursday evening, and we are also nearing the end of the fall trimester.  After conferences, we only have seven school days left in the term.  We’re going to finish our unit on Electricity, Waves, and Information Transfer this week, and will begin our Earth Science unit on Monday 11/23 if we’re able to get through everything I have planned for this week.  While I do want students to use one interactive notebook per term, I am asking that they bring their winter-term INB to school by the end of this week.  I want them to be able to have all of their work from the Earth Science unit in the same place – rather than in multiple notebooks – so we will begin work in the new notebooks with the start of our next unit.  I will be reminding students of this throughout the week, but please try to remind your student as well.  If your student only has a spiral notebook at home, I am more than happy to trade their spiral for one of my composition notebooks that I purchased over the summer.  As you can see in the schedule above, we will be doing some prep for Student-Led Conferences in science.  This preparation will be centered around reflecting on their progress so far this fall, and determining goals for the rest of the school year.  Students will be sharing these reflections and goals with you at conferences, and they will also be showing you the work they have completed in their interactive notebooks.  Early on in the Earth Science unit I will be conferencing with your student one-on-one about their fall progress, and their goals for the rest of the school year. I will also begin grading through Notebook 7 (pages 61-70) at the end of the week. As a reminder, if you ever want/need to schedule a parent-teacher conference with myself or any of the other teachers, please let us know.  Check back to the Week at a Glance throughout the week for any updates.  I hope you all have a wonderful week!

KK

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Week at a Glance: Week of 11/9 – 11/13

Monday 11/9: Finish Spinning Coil Motor Investigation

Tuesday 11/10: Unit 4 Performance Task

Wednesday 11/11: No School – Veteran’s Day.

Thursday 11/12: Guest Speaker (Natural Disaster Preparedness)

Friday 11/13 (Early Release Schedule, periods 1-3): Types of Waves, and Periods 1 & 3 will catch up with periods 4 & 6 with this early release.

Announcements:  Welcome to another week of Science!  This week, we have a bit of an odd schedule.  We have regular days on Monday and Tuesday, no school on Wednesday, a full day on Thursday, and then a half-day on Friday with periods 1-3.  We have a guest presenter scheduled to come on Thursday to talk about local and regional natural disaster preparedness.  This talk will serve as a spring-board for our next Earth Science unit, and serve as a foundation for the spring project.  With the holiday on Wednesday, I will be spending a lot of time getting material through Notebook 6 (through page 60) graded and posted to Synergy.  Student-led conferences are coming up on the evening of Thursday, November 19.  As a result, students do not have school on Friday, November 20.  After this week, we will be transitioning to our earth science unit with a short unit on the different types of waves – which will be very beneficial to our spring project as well.  Believe it or not, the end of the term is fast approaching, with the trimester grading day on Friday, December 4! This means that students need to start bringing in a new composition book for their winter term interactive notebook.  As I mentioned at the start of the year, students need to have three composition books for the entire school year.  If your student only has a spiral notebook, I am willing to trade one of my composition books for their spiral.  Also, the deadline for any make-up work for the fall trimester will be Wednesday, December 2.  We will use Thursday, December 3 to setup our new interactive notebooks for the winter trimester, do some goal setting based on performance in science, and give me the opportunity to conference with each student one-on-one for a few minutes.  My goal is for each student to meaningful improvement during the winter trimester as they begin to transition to high school.  Please let me know if you need anything, and check back for updates!

KK

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Week at a Glance: Week of 11/2 – 11/6

Monday 11/2: Capacitance

Tuesday 11/3: Unit 2 Reflection

Wednesday 11/4: Electrogmagnets

Thursday 11/5: Coil Motors & Kinetic Energy

Friday 11/6: Unit 4 Reflection (depending on how long the spinning coil motors take to construct)

Announcements: This week we have five days of science.  We are finishing up unit 2 of the our Waves unit.  We will also start and finish unit 4 this week as it is quite short.  I am going to have us transition to our next unit the week of November 16-20  There will be a guest speaker coming from the University of Oregon on November 12 to talk about preparedness at a local and regionally level for natural disasters.  I also spoke to the professor who manages the network of slinky seismometers from the University of Oregon, and he is excited about our interest in building seismometers and of the possibility of becoming a test site to collect data for the larger network.  For the students to be able to build the same seismometers that are part of a huge data collection network and to have the data that is collected from Kelly Middle School as part of that network is a wonderful opportunity.  The professor was also interested in coming to Kelly to help us setup the seismometers, and even come out to talk about the network, his research, and host us on a field trip to the UO; I will keep you all posted.  I hope you have a great week!

KK

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Week at a Glance: Week of 10/26-10/30

Monday 10/26: Finish Conductivity of Metals Investigation

Tuesday 10/27: Resistance & Capacitors, Resistance & Ohm’s Law

Wednesday 10/28: Wires & Resistance

Thursday 10/29: The Impact of Resistance on Electric Devices

Friday 10/30: Fall fest lab

Announcements: All sections of Science are on slightly different topics of our Energy & Waves unit right now – all within about a day or two of each other.  The major reason for this is because periods 4 & 6 had an extra day of science last week due to the early release schedule on Friday.  The schedule above is for those classes that are slightly ahead. At the very least, all classes will be through Notebook 4 (pages 31-40), and well into Notebook 5 by the end of the week.  We have about 2-3 weeks left of this unit before we’re going to transition to our Earth Science unit next that focuses on the historical changes in the Earth, and Earth systems such as volcanoes, earthquakes, plate tectonics, and continental drift.  We will kick that unit off with a guest coming in from the University of Oregon during the 2nd week of November or so (I’m still hammering out the details with the UO) to talk to us about natural disaster preparedness – both regionally and locally.  With this unit there might be an opportunity for a field trip to the University of Oregon to tour the slinky seismometer lab, or have the professor who runs the lab to come in and talk to our classes as we create our own seismometers in class.  I will keep you all posted.

KK

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Week at a Glance: Week of 10/19 – 10/23

Monday 10/19: Ben Franklin & Electricity (30) Leyden Jar Experiment (31), Wet-Cell vs Dry-Cell Batteries (32)

Tuesday 10/20: 2015-16 Transportation Video, Finish Investigation 1.2 – Measuring Current (33), Drawing Electrical Diagrams (34), Batteries & Currents in a Circuit (35), Relationship Between Batteries and Current in a Circuit (36).

Wednesday 10/21: Investigation 1.3 – Measuring Voltage (37), Batteries & Current on SS 1.3 (38)

Thursday 10/22: Investigation 1.4 – Measuring and Investigating Voltage, Unit 1 Reflection (39), Begin Unit 2 Resistance & Capacitors (41)

Friday 10/23 (Early Release, periods 4-6): Early Release Investigation 2: Conductivity of Metals

Announcements: Progress reports come out this week from the school.  We are really starting to get into our unit on Electricity, Waves, and Information Transfer.  Right now the students are investigating circuits, how to draw a schematic to represent circuits, how different types of batteries store and release energy, and how to measure the amount of current in an electrical circuit.  Notebook 3 grades will be posted by the end of the week (10/23).  Students who need to make up any material from Notebook 3 will have a deadline of 11/6.  Notebook 4 grades will be posted by 10/30, and will have a make-up work deadline of 11/13.

KK

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Week at a Glance: Week of 10/12-10/16

Monday 10/12: Finish Waves Preassessment Day 2: Examining Electrical Circuits, Electricity & the Senses

Tuesday 10/13: Waves Preassessment Day 3: Examining Electrical Circuits

Wednesday 10/14: Waves Lesson 1: Getting Started & Investigation 1.1 – Battery Basics.

Thursday 10/15: Waves Lesson 1: Finish Investigation 1.1

Friday 10/16: No School.  Mid-Trimester Progress Reporting.

Rubrics: Here are a couple of rubrics that I have created to assess your student’s skills engaging in Scientific Inquiry.  If I update these, I will post new versions.

Claim.Evidence.Reasoning.Rebuttal Proficiency Rubric – This is the rubric that explains the indicators of what proficiency scores mean for Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, and Rebuttal.

Claim Evidence Reasoning Rebuttal – This resource explains the purpose of Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, and Rebuttal in Scientific Inquiry.

Adapted Oregon Scientific Inquiry Scoring Guide – This is one of rubrics that I use when assessing a student’s investigation design.  Students typically will create a few investigations every term.  This rubric was created with my 2014-15 Science class.

KK

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Week at a Glance: Week of 10/5-10/9

Monday 10/5:Bridge Building Data Collection (13), Bridge Building Reflection (15)

Tuesday 10/6: Finish Bridge Building Data Collection (13), Finish Bridge Building Reflection (15), Bridge Class Data (16)

Wednesday 10/7: Bridge Redesign Schematic (17), Bridge Redesign Schematic Insturctions (18) Start STC Electricity, Waves, and Information Transfer (EWIT) Preassessment Day 1 Questions (19)

Thursday 10/8: Finish STC EWIT Preassessment Day 1 Questions (19), EWIT Preassessment Diagrams (20).

Friday 10/9: No School – Statewide Teacher Inservice

Announcements: We will start the first of many units that we are piloting for the district this week.  I will add more resources to this as we go.  There will be an increase in homework from virtually none to 1-2 short assignments on average per week.  Whenever we have an assignment, I will link a digital copy of it here in the week at a glance on the day it was assigned along with the corresponding due date.

KK

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Science Week at a Glance: Week of 9/28-10/2

This is an incredibly busy week!  We have school pictures on Monday, Open House on Wednesday, and Riverwalk on Friday.  To cap it all off, in Science we’re finishing our start of the year mini-unit on Engineering Design, and hopefully able to start our STC unit on Waves, Energy, and Information Transfer by the end of the week.  This is the beginning of a series of units that we’re piloting for the district curriculum adoption.  It’s very exciting that we were selected to be a pilot school for all three grade levels.  More to come on this, but here’s your week at a glance.  I will be linking documents to these days as I digitize them.

Monday 9/28: Bridge Construction

Tuesday 9/29: Finish Bridge Building, Begin Bridge Test Pre-Work (13) (Kordon was out sick)

Wednesday 9/30: Bridge Strength Tests, Bridge Types and Innovation (14)

Thursday 10/1: Bridge Engineering Design Reflection (15), and Bridge Redesign (16)

Friday 10/2 (per 1-3): Finish Bridge Redesigns

Announcements: Open House is Wednesday 9/30.  Riverwalk is Friday 10/2.  Reminder that Kordon will be gone on Wednesday 10/7 next week.  I got halfway through grades this last weekend because of getting sick.  So far, students overall are doing well.  I expect to be caught up with grades by the end of the week.  Notebook 2 grade will be input on the weekend of the 10th & 11th.

KK

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9/21/15 – First Grades

The first grades of the trimester will be posted on Synergy by the end of the week.  The first grades will include the first notebook grade (pages 1-10), a pre-assessment on investigation design that we finished today, and a pre-assessment on claim, evidence, and reasoning (the three aspects of a scientific conclusion).  The pre-assessments might not get fully posted until early the following week, but I have begun to work on them as of this evening.  The pre-assessment scores will not affect the students’ grades, but will be posted as “not for grade” in synergy so that you can see the baseline scores from which the idea is that students will improve on throughout the course of the year. Students will have 2-3 opportunities to improve on these proficiencies each trimester.  A rubric for what I am looking for will be shared in the coming days.  This will be one of the major things that we discuss at Open House along with a few other special things that we will be doing over the course of this year.

KK

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9/20/15

Science Week at a Glance: Week of 9/21-25

Monday: Review Investigation Design Lab (7)

EQ: How is the Engineering Design Process related to Investigation Design?

Tuesday: Investigation Design Review Notes (9)

EQ: How can I use the Engineering Design Process to build a bridge?

Wednesday: Basic Bridge Design (10), Bridge Design Examples (11)

EQ: How can I use the Engineering Design Process to build a bridge?

Thursday: Bridge Construction Schematic (12), Begin Construction of Bridges

EQ: What types of design features can I use to build a stronger bridge?

Friday: Finish Bridge Construction, Bridge Testing (13)

EQ: How can I use the Engineering Design Process to make improvements to my first bridge?

Announcements: Riverwalk Assesmbly on Friday 9/25, School pictures on Monday 9/28, Open House on Wednesday 9/30, Riverwalk on Friday 10/2, Kordon gone on Wednesday 10/7.

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Science Week at a Glance: Week of 9/14-9/18

Monday: Setup INB, assign iPads,

Tuesday: Geologic Time

Wednesday: Engineering Design Notes

Thursday: STEM Investigation

Friday – Early Release (Per 4-6): Claim, Evidence, Reasoning Activity – Part 1

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9/11/15:

Here is a copy of the class syllabus:

Kordon 8th Science 15.16 Syllabus

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9/10/15:

Welcome to 8th Grade Science!  Use this page to keep up on what is going on in class.  I will regularly post assignments, resources, and helpful links to help you have a successful year.

~KK