Michael J Allen

Specialist Teacher Plans

January 23rd - 27th

Review

You just have to love this charming group of students. It's a delight to spend time with them. Really! We stuck to the plan last week, and the students tolerated even the slightly dry aspect of some of the work. Some found the UCMP web-tour to be a bit boring, so we cut it short.

We have read all we need to about the types of rocks. The student's should all be prepared for the second part of the assessment that will determine their report card grades in this particular subject.

The students enjoyed making fossil imprints.

The most exciting lesson of the week was the final test of the egg-drop vehicles. Here we experienced a peculiar Area 51/Bermuda triangle incident. Lekha and Rebecca's vehicle, after flying out from the fourth floor window in the most bizarre way, ended up nesting on the roof, only to disappear mysteriously at the end of the day. I scoured the roof and the neighborhood after school but was unable to resolve the disappearance incident! It was simply gone. Escaped! The only problem was that it had forgotten its Eggy pilot during its daring escape from Stalag Brooks!

How strange.

We canceled the Egg-drop due to inclement roof conditions on Friday. Rebecca and Lekha kept up their spirits. We'll help them get another shot at this challenge. Other than that peculiar incident, most of the other tests were pretty ordinary and simply successful.

This week

Rocks, minerals and fossils

This week, in the final section of the Rocks project research phase, we investigate the structure of the Earth. We will find out about the layers of the Earth, about how rocks bend and break, and we conclude with a more involved and fascinating section on 'plate tectonics'.
We have a special guest coming in to talk about Rocks on Wednesday: Lia's Dad, who has a collection of phosphorescent rocks which he will share with us along with his knowledge.

Should be fascinating!

We will visit the UCMP ( University of California Museum of Paleontology) website for a tour of geologic time .
We will complete an activity about Mining that I'm sure the students will enjoy!

Rocks Website

Following the example provided by John F. Pattie Elementary, we will start a project to design a website about Rocks and fossils. We will try to answer the following questions and design a site around the work we produce.

Gather Information on the theory of Pangea. Present your findings to the class.
Design a survey of ways people use soil, sand, and rocks. Survey family or family friends. Graph the ways to show the frequency of each usage.
Use clay, shells, leaves, and twigs to investigate how fossils form. Identify different types of fossils, imprints, molds and casts.
Compare and contrast the importance of a rock as seen through he eyes of any artist, a geologist, and a gem merchant.
Collect and label 6-10 rocks. Arrange in a display to share with he class. Write a brief description of the rocks' characteristics and origin.
Determine how the minerals of the ocean may be divided fairly among the countries of the world. Make notes for a five minute speech to justify your plans.
Research a volcanic eruption such as Vesuvius or Mount Saint Helens. Write a magazine article about it, as if you were an eyewitness. Include the location of the volcano, when it erupts and other interesting facts about it.
Label the Earth's major plates. Explain the concept of plate tectonics.
Explain the different ways the Earth changes and illustrate each. Include weathering and erosion examples.
Develop a time line to illustrate the earth's geological history.
Draw a series of three pictures to illustrate commonly used products which are made from rocks and minerals.
Make a list of all the ways you can think of that people change the earth's surface.
Design a cut-away model of the layers of the earth.
Develop a VENN diagram to identify, compare, and contrast the 3 types of rocks: Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic. Create a graphic organizer to show the rock cycle.
Design podcasts on rock issues, such as how rocks form, what is erosion, etc.

Invention Challenge 2

This week dastardly Mr. Allen will finally launch the hapless egg-pilots and their fiendish devices from the roof of the school!

Prepare for launch on Tuesday, January 24th, 1:30 - 2:00pm...

Rocks and Minerals Links

Invention Challenge 2 - The Eggdrop Challenge

Build a contraption to protect a cute little egg when evil Mr. Allen chucks it off the roof of the school!! (Rules apply to this challenge restricting the nature of the device.) Prepare for launch...

Completed Projects

Simple Machines

The Simple Machines project is based around answering the question: 'Do simple machines confer an advantage in doing work?'
The whole project involves both online experiments and 'real world' experiments.

The focus is generating hypothesis, defining the independent and dependent variable, conducting tests, accumulating and analyzing data, and reaching fair conclusions.

The project for this week has the following online components:

The House and the Tool Shed

The Odd Machine

The 'Real World' experiments involve lifting weights using simple machines (ramps and levers) and comparing how much force is required compared to straight lifts. The students search for patterns in the data they generate.