Farewell 8th Graders

It's been a pleasure to teach all of you and get to know you as young adults.  I wish you luck in high school and beyond.  Take care, be safe and make wise choices.  Enjoy your summer.

Periods 1, 3, 5

Study Guides!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

We began working on our year end study guide.  It's huge!  10 pages total reviewing the whole school year's worth of science.  The study guide will be collected daily until Wednesday so students can study from it for their finals.  The Finals schedule is as follows:  Thursday, Periods 1,3, 5 have finals.  Friday, Periods 2, 4, 6. 

Once again students, the study guide is worth 200 points.  The final is worth 300 points.  You will also be graded on your growth from the pre-test that we took at the beginning of the year to this post-test.  So, work hard, study hard!  Have a great last week in 8th grade!

Study Guide For Final

Science Textbooks/Cruise

If you see any textbooks looking like this one, bring it back!  I need it!  Those of you who checked out textbooks and haven't returned them will be fine $60.00.  Thank you!


Also, tomorrow is the Annual 8th Grade Cruise on Coeurd'Alene Lake!  Those of you who have earned the priviledege will have an amazing time as well as get to eat some pizza and drink some soda too!  It'll be sunny, plan accordingly like SUNSCREEN!

See you on the BOAT tomorrow!!

Constellation Projects

The project due date has come and gone.  There were a few great projects.  See the amazingly perfect project about Libra below!  Nice job to the student who put in a ton of effort and it shows!  All late work is due by tomorrow!  Study guides come out on Monday and we will work on them in class for three days.  Finals are next Thursday for periods 1, 3 and 5 and Friday for periods 2, 4 and 6.  Study hard.  Grades for the final are based on two factors.  One, the actual score on the final and measurable growth from the students pre-test score from the fall to their post-test scores.  It's a great way to see how much all have learned over the school year here in Earth Science.  Work hard these last 6 days!

Classroom Planetarium

Today was the day we inflated the planetarium and sat under the stars in the middle of the day!  Once sitting in there for awhile and taking it all in, the students tried to identify what constellations they were actually looking at.  The top class gets some sort of prize.  Whatever I can afford. :)

Constellation Projects

Alright people, the end of the year is close so that can only mean one thing!  Constellation projects!  We will be researching constellations, the myths and cultures affiliated with them and then write our own myths about our constellations.  Once complete, we will then build a planetarium and paint the constellations and be able to fit a whole class in the planetarium to view our constellations in the dark.  Below is the paperwork that goes along with the project.  

Constellation Project Details

Big Bang Theory

Today we covered the state mandated topic of the "Big Bang Theory".  Students watched the video below and answered questions based on the video and turned it in at period's end.


Big Bang Theory Video
Video Worksheet

Black Holes

Nat. Geo: Black Holes Video

Livin' The Life Of A Star!

To review the stages of the life cycle of a star, we watched a short video and then students are to write a creative story from the perspective of a HIGH MASS star going through it's life cycle.  The pages below can be used as reference in their writing.  It's expected that facts are included within their writing that are accurate.

Life Cycle of Star Pages From Book
Rubric For Story

Magnitude and Star Temperature

We read E115-E128 about stars life cycles as well as their temperature and colors.  When completed the reading, we worked on the worksheets below.  Also, vocabulary from 4.1, 4.2 and the word constellation need to be defined.

Star Magnitude/Temperature

Life Cycle of Stars

We started ASTRONOMY today!  We are truly on the home stretch to the end of the school year now!  Students will need foam board by about next Wednesday for a project.  One per pairing of students.  We will also be using our devices on Tuesday and Wednesday next week for research!  Plan accordingly.  Today, we watched two Brainpop movies.  One about the sun and one about the life cycle of stars.  You can logon and watch those.  rachaelkt and the password is donorschoose.
There is a worksheet that goes along with it.  See below.

Brainpop-Life Cycle of Star worksheet

Finding Nemo

Nemo has to find the EAC (East Australian Current) in order to find his dad.  So, we decided to watch Finding Nemo today and Monday.  There is a worksheet that goes along with it.  Within the movie there is some good science!

Finding Nemo Worksheet

Rubber Duck INVASION!

True story!  1992.  92,000 rubber ducks dumped accidently into the ocean.  Where did they go and how did they get there?  We solve those mysteries in class today.  Today students were to use the map below to map the ocean conveyor belt.  They also were to make predictions about where they thought those 92k ducks went after being dumped just east of Japan.  Then on Wednesday, they were to use the book page C85 to map all the ocean currents and their temperatures.

Rubber Duck Article

Link to world map

Ocean Currents

This post is for Monday, April 28th.  We read section 3.1 in the book and completed a worksheet over our reading.

Oceans 3.1 Worksheet

Finishing Up Aquifers, On To Oceanography!

We finally finished our aquifer pamphlets and moved on to ocean currents.  Weather is affected by our ocean currents.  We will be watching Kon Tiki at the end of next week.  It's a great documentary about how primitive peoples used ocean currents to travel over 3,000 miles using ocean currents! Stay tuned!

Edible Aquifers

For the students to get a better idea in their mind of what an aquifer REALLY looks like, we made edible aquifers today in class.  This activity was great, the kids seemed to really get what we were making and without all your donations, it wouldn't have been possible, so THANK YOU!  We also had some pollution running through our aquifers and discussed how we could possibly prevent pollution in our drinking water and/or conserve our aquifer's water.  Great day in class.

The questions below needed to be answered in order to receive full credit for the activity.

1. What observations/results surprised you? What did not?
2. How did results compare among different aquifers? (Even if all students used the same option in Step 3,
each aquifer will be somewhat different.)
3. What parts of the activity were most/least like what would happen with a real aquifer? Why?
4. What happens if all of the water is pumped out of an aquifer? Where does more ground water come from?
How long do you think it would take? Is there always more ground water, or could we run out?
5. Do you think a contaminated aquifer can be cleaned? If so, how?
6. How can we conserve (save) ground water? What specifically can kids do?
7. How can we protect ground water (keep it clean)? What specifically can kids do?

Aquifer Brochures

Tuesday and Thursday we are working on aquifer brochures based on our knowledge of the Spokane-Rathdrum Prairie Aquifer.  The requirements are below.  These will be 50 points and I'm looking for the best one in EACH class.

Aquifer Brochure Rubric

Aquifer Atlas

The following link has the aquifer atlas that is in class.  It will help you complete the worksheet.  We worked on the aquifer atlas worksheet Friday and Monday in class.  It's quite extensive, so work hard. Hope you all had a great weekend.

Aquifer Atlas

Aquifer Atlas Worksheet

Movie Poster Mania!

Today in class we finished watching the video over the Great Missoula Flood.  Once complete, we began making our movie posters.  Above are some examples of movie posters.  The students posters must include the following:  Title, 2 movie reviews, 3 facts, color, creative, picture, 75% or more of poster must be used.