This week the Year 8 students began a project that we will work through in the Learning Hub. We’re finding out if it is possible to make some of those materials that we take for granted in our society. We also investigated and reported on Chemical Change through a reaction between citric acid and baking soda that becomes very cold and we looked at magnesium and acid followed by a resultant pop test for the hydrogen produced.
Year 9 students began their learning about digestion. We looked at what macronutrients are present in various foods. The digestive processes and system were covered plus some practical evidence that enzymes were indeed involved in the digestion of large food molecules.
Year 10 Science students looked at carbon/organic chemistry and made more cosmetics including some fine looking but very caustic soap.
Stage 1 Physics students began investigating energy through a practical and theory presentations. We have started an investigation into Energy use in Space Exploration. Test on waves is next week.
Monthly Archives: May 2014
Week 3 Term 2
Lots happened this week.
Had a really good week with my Year 8 Science class. We carried out a series of investigations looking into chemical and physical change on Wednesday afternoon. The students acquitted themselves well in the practical side, but I haven’t quite got across the message that if a new substance forms it is a chemical change for all of them. I do get to recap again. On Friday we made plastic from milk – I tried a new method whereby the casein was left in vinegar for an hour and then kneaded to make a more easily moulded substance. I’m not sure that changed much but we did produce more of the plastic than usual once we separated the milk into curds and whey. We also smelted iron on a match head and identified it with a magnet. This is my prelude into our project about whether we can make many of the materials we rely on at home. That starts on Wednesday, has a little break on Friday while we investigate some more chemical processes and then is completed over the next two weeks – we’ll be in the learning hub for this task. Homework this week was a take home test – only got 8 in on Friday so the rest are due Wednesday.
With the Year 9 Science class – it was Naplan week (eye roll) so we lost a lot of time and concentration and the progress some students were making fell into a hole because of this. Having said that one group of boys kept their focus really well and polished off their twenty points. My class had a hard time making up the twenty points (absences and inability to start). I am marking against standards so they’ll get a grade for the indicators they have shown and an N for the rest if they didn’t make the 20 points. Zoe will be following a similar method to mark her class, many of whom have made the 20 points. We start a much more teacher directed unit on digestion next week starting with a whole class practical investigation into what foods have in them.
10 Science. Still haven’t quite got the hang of these guys yet – not doing enough with food maybe. They enjoyed the opportunity to make cosmetics and that will certainly carry on. They had a relief on Thursday, while I had a little op, and didn’t get to access laptops so I’ll extend the timeline to cope with that. In hind sight I shouldn’t have run a learning menu on this topic as a lot of the things I have to be very directed about anyway. I’m going to talk carbon chemistry with them on Monday.
Stage 1 Physics, only had half a week due to Naplan supervision, mine, and career expo visiting, theirs. They did get most of a skills and applications task done, I’ll give them a little extra time on Tuesday. We’ll also make our telescopes then and the test we were to have next week is now postponed to the week after. Their homework at the moment is to begin test revision on waves. The Energy investigation didn’t get started – that’s going to be partly homework as I’m not making videos for this unit as it has become so short. I am actually making the videos as they will be useful for revision but I’m not setting them for homework.
Stage 2 Physics and Chemistry – students are getting tired. Some of them are using really good study habits and have started tutorial tasks and assignments ahead of time, others come along and appear surprised that we have things to do. Lots of the Chemistry group had forgotten their resource analysis questions from last week so we created them again. The Physics class had mixed results on their tests but at least someone in the class new how to do each question. They asked if they could take tests as a team.
gypsys summmary
Over the last few weeks my science class has been doing a mini project about car crashes. I have mainly been focusing on injuries, whiplash in particular. Over the last few weeks I have researched the force, the acceleration and the energy in a car crash and how it effects an injury such as whiplash.
The more acceleration you have in a car crash the bigger the force will be, if you reduce the acceleration the less force you will have.
You have posted some interesting information about crash injuries with links to sites. This particular post could have used a bit more effort. Summarising what you have found out about the effect of acceleration and energy on injuries sustained. We did have some good conversations about this but you haven’t recorded much about them. C+
Structural integrity – how a vehicle’s shell withstands and channels external forces away from occupants in a crash – varies substantially from make to make and model to model.
So there is lots of variation – could you show why that might be, or what the results of this are in crashes. Your other post on car safety showed more learning, this one looks like it could have used a little more effort. C
Forces: When the car begins to accelerate, some new forces come into play. The rear wheels exert a force against the ground in a horizontal direction; this makes the car start to accelerate. When the car is moving slowly, almost all of the force goes into accelerating the car.
Acceleration: is a measure of the rate at which the velocity of an object is changing. If you are riding in a car traveling in a straight line at a constant 50 kilometers per hour, you experience no acceleration because the car’s velocity (rate of motion) is not changing. If the car begins to speed up, acceleration occurs because the car’s velocity increases. If the car slows down, negative acceleration, or deceleration, occurs because the car’s velocity decreases.
where m is the mass and v is the velocity.
Energy: One of the interesting things about kinetic energy is that it increases with the velocity squared. This means that if a car is going twice as fast, it has four times the energy. You may have noticed that your car accelerates much faster from 0 mph to 20 mph than it does from 40 mph to 60 mph. Let’s compare how much kinetic energy is required at each of these speeds. At first glance, you might say that in each case, the car is increasing its speed by 20 mph, and so the energy required for each increase must be the same. But this is not so.
You have found some good, on topic information. You do need to acknowledge the sources of your information otherwise people will think you are claiming this information as your own. Also it would have been a good idea to show how your findings increased your knowledge of your chosen topic -safe cars. C
Car crash injuries and forces
What is kinetic energy
Kinetic energy is energy of motion. Objects that are moving, such as a roller coaster, have kinetic energy (KE). If a car crashes into a wall at 5 mph, it shouldn’t do much damage to the car. But if it hits the wall at 40 mph, the car will most likely be totalled.
Kinetic energy is similar to potential energy. The more the object weighs, and the faster it is moving, the more kinetic energy it has. The formula for KE is:
KE = 1/2*m*v2
Where m is the mass and v is the velocity.
One of the interesting things about kinetic energy is that it increases with the velocity squared. This means that if a car is going twice as fast, it has four times the energy. You may have noticed that your car accelerates much faster from 0 mph to 20 mph than it does from 40 mph to 60 mph. Let’s compare how much kinetic energy is required at each of these speeds. At first glance, you might say that in each case, the car is increasing its speed by 20 mph, and so the energy required for each increase must be the same. But this is not so.
We can calculate the kinetic energy required to go from 0 mph to 20 mph by calculating the KE at 20 mph and then subtracting the KE at 0 mph from that number. In this case, it would be 1/2*m*202 – 1/2*m*02. Because the second part of the equation is 0, the KE = 1/2*m*202, or 200 m. For the car going from 40 mph to 60 mph, the KE = 1/2*m*602 – 1/2*m*402; so KE = 1,800 m – 800 m, or 1000 m. Comparing the two results, we can see that it takes a KE of 1,000 m to go from 40 mph to 60 mph, whereas it only takes 200 m to go from 0 mph to 20 mph.
There are a lot of other factors involved in determining a car’s acceleration, such as aerodynamic drag, which also increases with the velocity squared. Gear ratios determine how much of the engine’s power is available at a particular speed, and traction is sometimes a limiting factor. So it’s a lot more complicated than just doing a kinetic energy calculation, but that calculation does help to explain the difference in acceleration times.
Brain Injuries
One of the most debilitating injuries suffered by drivers and passengers is an acquired brain injury caused by the head being hit or hitting an object violently (called a traumatic brain injury) . Symptoms can be mild, moderate or severe, depending on the extent of damage to the brain and the area effected. Even when there is no visible sign of trauma (i.e. cuts or bruises), the brain may have been jostled inside the skull due to the force of impact causing bruising, bleeding and swelling of the brain
What types of Brain Injuries (TBI) are there?
There are two types of TBI Penetrating Injuries and Closed Head Injuries
Penetrating Injuries: In these injuries, a foreign object (e.g., a bullet) enters the brain and causes damage to specific brain parts. This focal, or localized, damage occurs along the route the object has travelled in the brain. Symptoms vary depending on the part of the brain that is damaged.
Closed Head Injuries: Closed head injuries result from a blow to the for example, in a car accident when the head strikes the windshield or dashboard.
http://www.asha.org/public/speech/disorders/tbi/
http://www.webmd.com/brain/
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/auto-parts/towing/towing-capacity/information/fpte9.htm
Well found information it matches your topic well and you selection of appropriate information tells that you understood the learning we did around the Physics of car crashes – B good effort
Week 2
Friday was Brain Dissection Friday with my year 9s … ![IMG_1901[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_19011-17ceecl.jpg)
![IMG_1902[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_19021-265y002.jpg)
They were sheep brains of course – used to get across the main parts of the brain and carry out a dissection. Class were pretty sensible and used scalpels safely.
The 10s were supposed to complete their demonstration of their learning about the Physics of car crashes by posting on the blog. Next is to assess them.
8s took videos of the demonstrations I did around Physical and Chemical change – they need to get out more. Next week they’ll be carrying out their own chemical investigations.
Stage 1 Physics – optics, ray diagrams, real and virtual images were all concepts and skills we explored this week – the class got a second chance at preparing their practical investigation reports (leaving them to be completed over the holidays failed).
Prof dev day 7/5 Literacy, Numeracy, Innovative Pedagogy
I spelt literacy correctly good start to the day.
Asked to post literacy aspects we’re good at doing and those we would like to get better at. Needless to say I didn’t trouble the scoffers on the first one. Contributed lots on the second. (I always start PD days negative about my own skill set.)
I have to put a photo in for the next part … Identifying literacy components of subject. As it’s Science all of them got a yes.
Okay, first change brought about by today … Year 8 Chemical Changes I’m taking out some of the practical work to do explicit teaching of report writing as a large number of the class struggle with the organisation, they’ve got roughly how to write particular bits but using headings and which bits need to sentence style etc I need to improve on. So the extra time will be built around the assessed practical investigation.
Photos of literacy planning goes here.
![IMG_1886[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_18861-ta38zd.jpg)
![IMG_1887[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_18871-2bucuap.jpg)
![IMG_1888[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_18881-o5j9ry.jpg)
Numeracy
This was a little more straight forward as we were looking at year 10s and most of the year 10 Science curriculum is mostly numeracy.
Mostly planning this session similar documentation to last time so Photo goes here. ![IMG_1889[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_18891-28n95yn.jpg)
![IMG_1890[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_18901-26dbbdo.jpg)
![IMG_1891[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_18911-qdwtwj.jpg)
![IMG_1892[1]](https://colingrace.edublogs.org/files/2014/05/IMG_18921-1o3faqf.jpg)
Third session on innovative pedagogy looked at project based learning. I’d already signed up for the site after a previous PD used it to create a project based learning task that I will run with my year 8s later this term.
Here is the plan on google drive
Professional Development 6/5
Inquiry based learning
Handing over the learning to others. Student centred.
Development of a question followed up by investigation response and discussion.
Students are active I their learning based on their own questions. Cyclic approach.
Based on student’s curiosity eg Hover board activity just did with 8s.
Question word. Who. Action. For. — to create question.
Students thinking about own learning process – looking to engage some self motivation.
Students make links from collected learning, make links and connect.
Discuss share ideas with each other to acknowledge the community nature of knowledge …. Leads on.
Students reflect and consider … Have they achieved can they go further?
See graphics for inquiry poster. (Something for me to find).
Scaffold to think about learning.
Questions to ask
What have we been doing to find out about this?
What have been some of the most effective sources?
How might we go about organising this information?
If we wanted to get another point of view about this what should we do?
What will we need to think about before we get started on this?
How are you feeling about what you have learned/done so far?
How are your idea about this changing?
What has been the thing that has most changed your thinking? Why?
What kind of thinking will we need to do to achieve this?
What are you noticing about your thinking?
There are some small parallels between this and the task my 10s are currently creating. They have chosen a general area to look at about car crashes and are creating their own questions to ask. I need to scaffold the creating questions part better.
Presented by Rhoni McFarlane I’ll post the power point when it arrives.
Strong match to some just in time learning.
Team Teaching.. Presented by Sally N.
Active participation planning how we would put a different method into place to teach a skill. I’ll put copies of summary hand outs up.
Did a lot of this in my Middle School past.
Project based learning. … Presented by Gabbi R.
bie.org (think I’ve been there)
10 Science.
As you can see we’re making slow progress on the students creating posts around their learning about car crashes – students chose either safe cars or trauma in a crash. By Thursday everybody has to have blogged and discussed the sources they have used.