Week 7 Term4

10 weeks have passed since when we started working with Mrs M about our thinking about our learning and talking about thinking and reflecting on our thinking.

When I startedtalking and thinking about my own learning this is what I thought it was...

Learning is something that anybody can do.
When people learn they get more knowledge.

How useful has learning about Solo Taxonomy been been to you in giving you some structure for thinking learning about your learning?

Solo Taxonomy has been very useful in helping us improve our learning.
If we never relised that we could use we would not have known how to improve in our learning.
Solo Taxonomy allows us to develop certain skills such as being able to do the next step in learning which would be useful in life.
We used a ruberic to move up to the next step in thinking by redoing our work and improving on
it to develope our thinking to a higher level.

I am glad...

*that mrs M has taught us about solo taxonomy
*When I use solo taxonomy to improve in my work I try and think of a better sentence to be the best I can be

Using solo taxonomy we have been learning to predict.
Predicting is a very important life skill. We are using solo taxonomy in subjects like science and writing.
Predicting is a kind of thinking.
When you predict it is like you can see the result of something that is happening at the present time. You are thinking what is the conclusion if whatever is going on keeps going on, or if you stop it happening, what will be the result?
On Monday I did a class investigation on favourite cities out of the four cities out of Madrid, Moscow, Buenos Aires and Baghdad.
I predicted that the most popular city would be Moscow.
The final resuls showed:
Moscow with 18 tallies
Buenos Aires with 3 tallies
Madrid with 3 tallies
Baghdad with 1 tally
My prediction was right!
It was a fun activity.

Science Project Planning

Stage Two

A. Apparatus / Equipment -

Anti-bacterial Hand gel
Anti- bacterial Hand wipes
Anti-bacterial Soap
Tap - water
Kids in my class - 25 kids
Potato slices - potatoes
Clip seal plastic bags
Pen
Knife
Chopping Board
Disposable gloves x 2
Adult Helper
List of instructions for hand cleaning

The Method - the steps and stages
Before I start I will pre-mark all plastic bags with group details.
1. First I will divide the 25 kids into 5 groups of 5.
1. Water only group
2. Water and Anti-bacterial Soap group
3. Anti-bacterial hand wipe group
4. Anti-bacterial hand gel group
5. Control group
2. Then I will teach them how to clean their hands thoroughly.
3. Next the adult helper and I will put the gloves on.
4. After that the adult helper will slice the potatoes on the chopping board.
5. While the helper is slicing potatoes, I will take the first group and get them to complete their hand cleaning task.
5. As soon as the potatoes are sliced I will take the samples by rubbing the potato slice on their palms.
6. Immediately after taking each sample I will place the potato slice into the plastic bag and seal it.
7. For all 5 groups I will repeat these steps.
8. Finally I will take all samples home and put them in a dark place.

Science project

Science Fair Management Plan
Stage One

My Interests in Science - wells, pulleys, flight, insects, birds, forces, design, art, animals and natural disasters

Aim - Which way of cleaning your hands gets rid of the most germs?

Hypothesis - I think the hand gel will take away the most germs.

Here is a list from first to last that I will test.
1. Antibacterial Hand Gel
2. Hand wipes
3. Washed hands with soap
4. Washed hands

What I know about my topic -

I know that most germs are not dangerous/infectious ie. that make you sick.
That there are germs everywhere and that different places have different amounts of germs.
I am doing this experiment because Swine flu has moved into our country. Our government health authority recommends using Hand Gel to clean you hands. But does using hand gel take away more germs than using hand wipes, washing your hands with water or using water and soap?
I know how to grow bacteria in a culture because I have done this before in Grade 2.

What I have found out about my topic -

To grow germs you must have a dark place.
Potato slices make good cultures.
The more surfaces the potato slice touches the more germs it will pick up.
It's important to have a control slice of potato so that you can see how many germs were already on the potato slice.
If you wash your hands with water and soap it will take away a lot of the germs but if you dry your hands with a hand towel there are more germs in the towel and they will go onto your hands.
However if you use a paper towel it will probably remove all the germs off your hands. This is why they use paper towels in hospitals and doctors rooms I think.
This could possibly be another part to my experiment or not?
I learnt that the way you wash your hands also affects the amount of germs left on your hands. So for my experiment, for the best results I will need to teach the subjects how to wash, wipe, gel their hands properly.
Did you know that Penicillin made for curing many harmful diseases caused by bacteria, pencillin comes from mould, a bacteria?

Now for a few jokes....
Why did the germ cross the microscope? To get to the other slide!
What are germs least favourite tv shows? Soap Operas!

Next steps to learning

I've built my traps but it's too cold and I haven't caught a good amount of insects. I have decided to carry on with this investigation later when the weather is warmer. I'm still going to put pictures on my blog. For the next five weeks we are having a science fair and these are the topics I'm interested in:
wells with pulleys
forces
gravity
plane flight
magnetism
I will let Mrs Mitchell know which area I'll be working on tomorrow.

Insect Traps

As part of my learning at school I am studying entomology. I have made some insect traps but there doesn't seem to be many insects around at this time of the year. Maybe when it's somewhere in the middle of September I might catch more insects. I've put a night light trap out a few times and only caught a few very small moths(maybe a mosquito as well.) My pitfall trap under my little sister's pumpkin plant didn't prove me good as the overall result:0 insects. Here are photos of my traps.

Gifts from the Sun

Gifts from the Sun

It is the beginning of time…, volcanic ash fades, there is almost no life to be seen on the whole face of the earth. Warm rays beam down on the dark shadowy planet. A microbe wiggles then rain pours on the dry surface. After a few weeks the microbe starts to grow into a small plant.

The tiny plant grows tall and green. It develops fast into a mature plant, and produces seeds. Another dry spell comes, the plant withers and dies. It releases its seeds. The seeds float away, fall to the ground and start to grow.

Meanwhile in the sea, another microbe is developing from one cell to two cells, three and so on. This is the beginning of marine life.

Two hundred billion years onwards….

The suns rays are powerful. There is a layer above the earth, the ozone layer, it blocks out most of the suns harmful rays. A hole in this layer exists near Antarctica, caused by pollution.
Without the ozone layer the earth’s surface would be to hot and dry
for life to exist.

It is the year 2009, the earth’s surface is now covered with dry deserts, green forests, deep oceans, tall mountains, fertile grasslands and ice.

We live the right distance away from the sun, not too hot, not too cold, so we can have life on our planet. The sun also keeps the water cycle going. Water in puddles, lakes, rivers and seas is heated by the sun, it turns into water vapour an invisible gas which rises up into the sky to form clouds. The clouds move towards the mountains and
rain. The rain drains into rivers and collects in the sea.

From the first cells of life to the magnificent deserts and forests we have today, all this life was created by the sun and just a few other elements.

The sun gives us the precious gift of life.