Hey there everyone! We have finally finished up with our online debates yesterday. Check out the few pics below of some of my students fully engaged in their debate. All of my students did an AWESOME job with the project and they seemed to really enjoy it! Today we are doing some review for our test tomorrow using the site www.plickers.com. This site is an awesome site that allows me to give them a formative assessment and see where they are before we take the test tomorrow.
And on that note, WE WILL BE TAKING OUR UNIT TEST TOMORROW!!! Be sure you are prepared!! Have a great evening and see you tomorrow for TEST day!!
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All around us in the media we hear about political debates, especially now with the Presidential race getting under way. Republicans have already held one debate and there is another one on TONIGHT! Democrats will also be debating in the future. Here at H.J. MacDonald, we will be holding a unique style of debate. In class, we are learning about Biotechnology and its role in the economy of North Carolina. The students will be given 2 topics: Genetically Modified Organisms (commonly known as GMO's) and Cloning. They are then split into two teams, pros/cons (for and against) each topic. Wednesday and Thursday they will spend the day researching their topic and writing a 3 paragraph essay collaboratively through Google Docs with their group. Friday we will start our online debates after we take our vocab quiz. Through the use of Google Documents, we will have the students perform a silent debate by typing their arguments and counter-arguments into a document at the same time. We will use this time to not only to show the rules of debate, but also how to act when presenting sides of an argument and how to work as a group effectively. See below for the document with instructions for this project as well as how it will be graded. I am really looking forward to these next few days!!
Reminder!! Your vocabulary is due on FRIDAY and we have a quiz that day as well! Online Debate Instructions Good morning! Today we are working on finishing up our notes from yesterday (see yesterday's post for the links). Once we finish that we will begin a webquest activity (see link below) that requires students to research different careers in the field of biotechnology.
Just a reminder, vocab is due Friday and we will have a quiz that day as well! BIOTECH CAREER WEBQUEST Today we started a new topic in the Structures and Functions of Living Organisms unit.....BIOTECHNOLOGY!! This topic always tends to be one of the more interesting topic for students. They really seem to get into it and love to debate about the different topics.
We are starting our week with a POWERPOINT ON BIOTECHNOLOGY. Students are required to take FILL IN THE BLANK NOTES that go along with the presentation. Students also received their new vocab words for the week. These will be due on Friday and we will be taking a quiz Friday on these words. VOCAB WORDS DUE 9/18 biotechnology genetics gene cloning genetic modification ethical bio-remediation toxic I am looking forward to the great conversations this topic will produce throughout the week! Have a great night! Today we began watching one of my all time favorite movies, Osmosis Jones! Some of my students were able to watch this movie last year in 7th grade, but this year instead of looking at it from a human body perspective, we are watching it from a pathogens and disease perspective. Students will be filling out THIS form while watching the movie. We will be using today and tomorrow's class to complete this movie.
Students were also given their BENCHMARK STUDY GUIDE today to complete for homework. This will be due on Thursday and we will be going over all of the questions so students are sure to have a good idea of what their benchmark will look like. Happy studying!! Today students turned in their vocab notebooks to be checked as well as took a quiz on the previous set of vocab words. We then worked on finishing our PSA poster project that we started on Friday all about GMO's. These projects will count as a TEST grade and they are due tomorrow! Be sure to finish these up tonight and bring them back. See Friday's post with more information about this project as well as the rubric for how I will be grading it.
Looking ahead, you should be preparing yourself for the next benchmark test on Friday.It will cover all of the Pathogens and Disease Unit as well as the Biotechnology Unit. Make sure you are studying all those vocab words and all of your notes in your notebooks. Friday is here!! Today we kicked off a project that will count as a test for this unit. Students were asked to complete the following ASSIGNMENT (courtesy of https://sciencewithmsbarton.wordpress.com/) on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs). From that assignment students were tasked with choosing a side (for or against GMOs) and write an argumentative paragraph explaining their side. From there, students are required to create a Public Service Announcement (PSA) poster that concisely gets their opinion across to the public. See below for the rubric for this project. We will finish up the project on Monday.
Reminders: Vocab is due Monday and you have a quiz on those 5 words Monday as well. PSA POSTER PROJECT RUBRIC (100 pts possible) Catchy slogan/title 10 pts Info gets your message across to your audience 15 pts Contains factual information 20 pts Neat & organized 10 pts Colorful 10 pts Pictures/charts/graphs/diagrams 15 pts Argumentative paragraph (glue to back of poster) 20 pts Have a great weekend! See you Monday! Just a quick update for today. We finished our notes that we started yesterday (see yesterday's post for the links to download the PPT). We then finished the class off with a game of Quiz-Quiz-Trade with assessment questions about biotechnology.
Students also received this week's set of vocab words. These words will be due on Monday (1/26) and they will have a quiz that day as well on those words. See below for the list of words. Have a great day! VOCAB WORDS DUE MONDAY 1/26/15 Biotechnology Gene Cloning Genetic modification Bioremediation Happy Wednesday everyone! We started our short week off with the Reading Benchmark exam today which made all of our classes a bit shorter. We started off class with our vocab quiz. We then moved to taking some notes in our interactive notebooks. We did not get finished with these notes but will continue them tomorrow. You can find a copy of the fill-in-the-blank notes HERE. You can find the PowerPoint we for this unit HERE.
Tomorrow we will work on finishing up the notes and working with some assessment type questions to help prepare for the next Science benchmark. Ta ta for now! |
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November 2015
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