Why hello there everyone! It's has been a little while since I last updated. I have admittedly been pretty bad at updating the blog the last few weeks. It just seems like the days are so busy and jam packed that I cannot find a minute to get things like this done. We have had 2 weeks of benchmark testing, Honor Roll and Principals List celebrations, Principals Pride festivities, and field trips that have consumed our schedule for a while and now we have a much deserved 5 days of rest coming up for Thanksgiving break next week!
There has been a change in some of the procedures in my classroom. All of the teachers in the building had a long talk with our Principal, Mr. Wallace and he has set some high expectations for his teachers and students at this school (which he rightfully should!). With that being said, this means that I have to rearrange some of the expectations I set for my students and in this case it comes in the form of how I will allow students to make corrections on tests and quizzes. In the past, students have been allowed to make corrections on any test or quiz, regardless of their grade, and I would give them half a point for each correction they made which would improve their grade on the test or quiz. This is no longer the case. All students have been notified of this change this week. THE NEW POLICY- EFFECTIVE NOVEMBER 19TH, 2015 FOR TESTS: Students will NO LONGER be able to "fix" their grade on a test. The grade they earned on the test will be the grade they keep from here on out. However, the day following the test, students will be required to do an Error Analysis on their test that will require them to go back through the questions they got wrong and try and figure out what they did wrong. If completed correctly, this assignment will give them a 100% classwork grade which can boost their overall class grade. FOR QUIZZES: Students who earn a 75% or higher on a quiz will NO LONGER be able to make corrections on their quiz. Students who earn below a 75% on their quiz may make corrections following the guidelines on the REQUEST TO FIX A QUIZ FORM. I will give them half a point for each question they correct. This will raise their grade on their quiz tremendously, however, their grade WILL NOT RAISE ABOVE A 75%. In other words, after making corrections, the maximum score they can receive on a quiz will be a 75%. As I said before, the expectations for teachers has changed which in turn requires me to change my expectations for my students and hold them to a higher standard. This may require some parents to also adjust their expectations for their child and should definitely change the habits of some students. It is SO important to be studying at home for tests and quizzes and really paying attention to the activities we do in class to reinforce the concepts we are required to learn. No longer can you assume you don't have to study because you know you can make corrections after the test. Don't forget, you are going to the high school soon and things are only going to get harder from here. Now is the time to change our study habits so we can learn to be successful in high school. If you have any questions regarding this new policy feel free to email me any time. I will try to answer any questions you may have. I hope you all have a wonderful night and don't forget: TOMORROW WE HAVE A QUIZ AND MONDAY WE WILL TAKE THE FINAL TEST FOR THE ECOSYSTEMS UNIT.
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What a busy and fun week it has been here at HJ. All week students have been participating in spirit week here at school. Each day has given the kids an opportunity to dress up and show their school spirit. Yesterday we were able to participate in an exciting pep rally and the 8th grade WON FOR THE MOST SCHOOL SPIRIT!! They will get to have a fun party on Friday with Mr. Wallace!! Students also took their Pre-Assessment for our new science unit on Ecosystems. Today, students are taking their Fall Reading Benchmark Assessment.
Tomorrow, we will start to dive into the Ecosystems unit and students will use a GRAPHIC ORGANIZER to take notes from a POWERPOINT PRESENTATION. Next week we will have a whole line of activities lined up to show limiting factors, population density and much more. I hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween weekend! See you next week! Phew...you know it has been busy when I am not able to update the blog. I apologize for the delay! So, lets get caught up! Here are the activities we worked on in the last week that helped us gain a better understanding of cellular respiration and photosyntheses:
STATION POSTERS STUDENT STATION PAPERS PHOTOSYNTHESIS/CELLULAR RESPIRATION: MAKING ENERGY PHOTOSYNTHESIS & RESPIRATION POSTER PROJECT We also used the online website plickers.com to review for our test that we took on Friday. Today, students are working on doing their error analysis for the questions they got wrong on the test. Tomorrow we will be getting started with our new unit on Ecosystems. There are no new vocab words for this week. Stay tuned for more updates this week. Today, students were required to complete a READING ASSIGNMENT that covered how food is converted into usable energy. The assignment focused mainly on photosynthesis and cellular respiration. After reading students had some text based questions to answer and they were also required to fill in a GRAPHIC ORGANIZER.
The week is going great so far! We are half way done! Reminders, your vocab is due Friday and today's assignment is due tomorrow if you did not finish it in class. Also, DON'T FORGET TO GET YOUR FIELD TRIP PERMISSION SLIPS SIGNED AND YOUR MONEY BROUGHT IN! This week we will be focusing on cell structures and processes and more specifically photosynthesis and cellular respiration. Today, students will be taking FILL-IN-THE-BLANK NOTES from a POWERPOINT ON CELL PROCESSES. We will continue taking these notes tomorrow in class as well.
Students also received their last set of vocab for the Molecular Biology unit (see below for the words). These will be due Friday and we will take a quiz Friday on these words. Make sure you are studying. Check in all week for updates on what activities we will have going on each day! VOCAB DUE 10/16 mitosis meiosis glucose ATP cellular respiration photosynthesis eukaryote prokaryote Well, what a weird and crazy week it has been! No school Monday, short day on Tuesday, field trip on Wednesday, I was absent Thursday and a half day Friday. With all of these shortened classes we haven't had much time to get many new things completed. We are continuing to work on our INFOGRAPH PROJECT we started on Friday of last week. My hopes is that we will finish that project up on Friday or Monday.
There was no new vocabulary this week, so we will not have a quiz tomorrow. We will pick up with some new vocab next week. Enjoy the half day tomorrow and have a great weekend! Students were busy and engaged today while they traveled through different STATIONS ABOUT HEALTHY LIVING. In these stations they analyzed infographs, watched a BrainPop video, created a PSA poster for the anti-drug campaign, played memory match with several different vocabulary words, and read some articles on healthy living. We didn't have time to finish them all today so we will pick up where we left off tomorrow.
Don't forget to be working on those vocab words that are due Friday. Have a great day! Happy Tuesday everyone! I hope everyone has been staying dry the last few days! This rainy weather is making me so sleepy these days! Fortunately, we have lots of science work to keep us busy!
Yesterday we started right in on our new unit on Molecular Biology. Students were shown a POWERPOINT PRESENTATION on human health and they had a GRAPHIC ORGANIZER to fill out and take notes on during the presentation. New vocab words were given out (see below). These are due Friday, October 2nd. Be sure to study for the quiz too! Today we worked on a literacy assignment. Students read an ARTICLE ON HEALTHY LIVING and had several questions to answer at the end. Some of these questions required them to recall what they read and some of the required them to analyze and synthesize their reading. If this assignment was not finished before the end of class then it was assigned as homework and is due tomorrow. VOCAB DUE 10/2/15 calorie digestion metabolism basal metabolic rate (BMR) lipid protein carbohydrate 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!! 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! Quick update here.
Yesterday and today, students worked on completing an assignment that required them to read through several different infographics and answer questions about different epidemics and pandemics that have occurred throughout history. You can find the links to the infographics and the questions for this activity HERE. Students also took their third vocab quiz today. Overall they all did pretty great! I hope everyone has a wonderful and restful weekend. See you on Monday. Welcome back everyone! I hope you enjoyed your long weekend, even if it wasn't the greatest weekend weather-wise. Unfortunately I was unable to be in class today due to a workshop I had to attend. While I was away, students played the role of Doctor and had to diagnose some celebrity patients. The activity was titled CELEBRITY CASE FILES.
Students also received their new set of vocabulary words. You can find these in the vocabulary section of my website and I will also list them below. Vocab notebooks will be due Friday and students will take their vocab quiz Friday as well. Don't forget, we will be having a dance here at HJ on Friday right after school. Admission is $5 and concessions will be sold. Be sure to come on out and have a great time with all of your friends! Have a great evening and I will be back at school tomorrow! VOCAB WORDS DUE 9/11/15 pandemic epidemic outbreak exposed infectious contagious quarantine non-infectious Who's excited for the upcoming long weekend? I hope you all enjoy and have a fun and safe holiday weekend!
Finishing up the week, students took their second vocab quiz and did very well. After the quiz we worked independantly on a literacy assignment. Students were required to read about OUTBREAKS, EPIDEMICS, and PANDEMICS. While reading, they were required to fill out a GRAPHIC ORGANIZER to keep their thoughts straight and to also create a great study tool. After they completed the reading they were expected to answer 6 text based questions on a separate sheet of paper. This will be turned in for a grade. If students did not finish they are expected to complete the assignment over the weekend. Again, I hope you all enjoy the long weekend. I will see you back here on Tuesday. Half way through the week everyone! YAY!
Yesterday was kind of a brutal day. We worked really hard to claim each student's online account. We had to work through computer issues, internet issues, tying issues...I could go on and on but we made it through and now we are all able to access the internet!! Today, students are going to get the opportunity to solve a mystery. They will be required to use their math skills, deductive reasoning skills, and team player skills while they play the role of disease detective and find out exactly which school lunch food gave students food poisoning (no worries, this didn't actually happen, it is purely fictional!). Students will be using this DISEASE DETECTIVE activity to complete this assignment with a partner. REMINDER: Vocabulary is due on Friday. I will post the definitions on Thursday HERE so that you can check to see if yours match mine. Hey, hello, and hi to everyone out there! Today, despite the dreary weather, has been a great day! We started off the day watching a video about how viruses invade the body (see below). Students were also given their new set of vocab words today (see below). These words are due Friday September 4th in the proper format (words, definition, drawing in color) in their vocab notebooks. VOCAB WORDS DUE FRIDAY 9/4 (quiz that day as well) host microbiology microscopic transmit resistant mutate vector replicate immune system Students were also given a reading and writing assignment that had them compare and contrast viruses and bacteria. This assignment is due TOMORROW!! You can find a copy of that HERE. Also, students were given back they graded vocab quizzes from Friday. If they want to improve their grade they need to follow the steps on this REQUEST TO FIX A TEST/QUIZ FORM. They must do this on their own time and turn it in when it is complete. Students will receive half a point for each correction made. I hope you all had a great Monday. Feel free to contact me with any questions! We did it! We made it through the first week of school. All in all it has been a great week!
To finish out the week, students turned in their vocab notebooks and took their first vocab quiz. Some students may wish to make corrections on this quiz. Stay tuned to Monday's post to get directions for making corrections. After the quiz we rotated through 4 different stations learning all about pathogens. Students were expected to fill in this GRAPHIC ORGANIZER while they read this INFORMATION with a partner. Students worked really hard and did a great job! I hope you all enjoyed the first week of school as much as I did. Have a great weekend and see you next week! Hey there everyone! We have successfully made it half way through the first week of school! I am excited to see where this year leads us.
On this rainy Wednesday, students started taking their first set of notes. They were required to fill in a GRAPHIC ORGANIZER while listening to a PowerPoint Presentation about Pathogens and Disease. We didn't finish the entire presentation today so we will pick up where we left off tomorrow. DON'T FORGET: Your vocab is due FRIDAY!! You have a quiz on that set of words FRIDAY as well! See yesterday's post for directions on how to set up your notebook and for the list of words you need. Have a wonderful evening. See you bright and early! Well we have made it through the first 2 days of school and everything has gone incredibly well! What an amazing group of students we have this year. I can already tell that this year is going to be exceptional!
We started the week off with our first unit on Structures and Functions of Living Organisms (8.L.1). Today students were instructed on how to set up their binders and vocab notebooks and were given their first set of vocab words (see below for the list of words). Every Monday students will be given a new set of words and will be required to keep track of them in their notebooks. Each word will be worth 4 points (1 pt for the word, 1pt for the definition, 1pt for a picture, and 1pt for coloring the picture). These words will be due every Friday and we will take a quiz that day on that week's set of vocab words. It is incredibly important for students to keep up with these words because they are essential for learning our science curriculum. THIS WEEK"S WORDS (DUE FRIDAY 8/28) virus protozoa parasite pathogen fungi bacteria antibiotic vaccine antiviral We also were able to complete a fun activity that demonstrates how diseases are spread throughout populations. The students had fun and they even got to have treat when they were done. Interested in knowing exactly what they did? Click on the link below to view their assignment. DISEASE TRANSMISSION CANDY SIMULATION Hopefully you have had a great first couple days like I have. Enjoy your evening and I will see you tomorrow. Welcome back everyone! It was so great to meet all of you that came to open house last night. After meeting all of you and getting to speak with your parents I am certain that this year is going to be the best school year yet! I truly am looking forward to working with all of you.
Get ready to hit the ground running on Monday. Parents, don't hesitate to email me if you have any questions! lindsy.kievit@cravenk12 .org Enjoy the rest of your summer vacation and I will see you Monday! It has been a busy week here in 8th grade science! Yesterday students took their final benchmark assessment on the Energy Unit. This whole week we have also been working on finishing up the group portion of the unit project on energy. I grouped students who researched the same form of energy together. They were tasked with creating a visually appealing poster that contained information about their assigned energy. Tomorrow, each group will present their findings to the class and the class will vote on what they think is the best form of energy to use on Earth. Students have been working really hard with this assignment and I am looking forward to seeing the results!
Next week we will jump right in with EOG review. We have about 2.5 weeks to go back and look over everything we have learned this year and prepare for the EOG. The Science EOG will be on June 4th, so mark you calendars! We are all going to strive to get a 4 or 5 this year on the Science EOG. If you want to review for the EOG at home, click on the EOG tab above or you can click HERE. **REMINDER** If you have any missing/make-up work or fixed tests/quizzes you need to get them turned in NO LATER than May 22nd. NO EXCEPTIONS!! Happy Friday everyone! Students received a study guide today for the 8th and final Benchmark Assessment on Energy. This study guide is due on Monday and the benchmark test will be taken on Tuesday. See below for a copy of this study guide.
We also started a project on Energy Resources. Each student was given a type of energy resource to research individually. You can find resources for each type of energy at THIS website. Next week, we will take the information students found on their own and work in groups to create a final product....more to come on the group part later. See below for the questions students had to answer for their assigned resource. This paper must be completed by the end of the class on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend. See you Monday. Energy Study Guide (due Monday) Energy Resource Project Question Page Today, students took their last set of notes for the year on Energy. We learned all about the different forms of energy, different energy transformations, and also about the different types of renewable and nonrenewable energy resources. Please see below for the PPT notes and a copy of the student notes for their notebooks. Tomorrow we will finish up our station activity on energy and then move into starting a project to finish out the unit.
Have a great day! ENERGY POWERPOINT NOTES Student Note Sheet Hello Science students! Yesterday you received your LAST SET of vocab words for the year. We are finishing up our last unit on Energy. See below for those words. Today, we began a station activity that has students walk through several different types of energy. See below for a copy of the stations.
Make sure you are working on vocab and studying your words. Have a great night and I will see you tomorrow. Energy Resource Stations Vocab Due 5/11/15 Natural resource Renewable resource Nonrenewable resource Energy conservation Fossil fuels |
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