Get to know you.. roll the yarn

As we began a  year of 4th grade CSI, we enjoyed a "get to know you" activity where we took turns rolling a ball of yarn across the floor to each other. As the ball of yarn came to each student, they shared something about themselves.

We made an analogy to how our class-

room functions as a team. We depend on

each other for ideas, support, encouragement and friendship. When we lose one person in our web, our web is weakened. 

We actually ran out of yarn when we were making our web and tied on another roll. We symbolized that as a new student coming on board. We would immediately welcome them to our class.

Great way to start the year!

All About Me:

Each Tuesday, the students may bring something to share about themselves. Since our program involves students from three campuses coming together, it is a nice way to get to know each other.

Cole always asks great questions and is a great speaker.
Cole shared his Lego projects.

Cole takes Legos to a new dimension! He shared his love of building Lego projects. He brought some of his favorites to share. Cole says, "I can't let a day go by without touching Legos!" He has built some large vehicles using only Legos.

Thanks, Cole!

Moriah has many talents and strengths. She shared her love of reading!

Moriah brought her reading medals to show her love of reading. She had many talents to share with us and told us about her travels to interesting places. She once snorkled with a pufferfish! She also was a finalist in the Washington County Spelling Bee. Her love for ocean animals brought her to rescue sea turtles and swim with dolphins! Great news Moriah!

We are off to a great start for 2012!

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CSI 2012

Open House was great this year and it was exciting to meet all the new scientists and see the 5th and 6th graders from last year.
Brenham Middle School used the theme, "Oh the Places You'll Go" with Dr. Seuss. All of the teachers contributed to reading and filming a small section of this book. Check out the link here:
BMS Oh the Places You'll Go

In the Tech Lab, as one way to determine the needs of my Gifted students I used freeonlinesurveys.com linked to Symballoo to set up a simple student interest survey.
It was easy to use and as the parents were trying to finish paperwork, the students answered a few questions about themselves.

I hope to use their responses as "get to know each other" activities.
Here are a few responses from the 4th grade survey: #6 responses being by far my favorite!

1. Name
2. What kinds of things do you LOVE to learn about? Science, Math, Nature, Animals...
3. What do you like to do in your free time? sleep, read, draw, make things out of paper...
4. What kinds of things have you collected? snow globes, rocks, coins, bugs, arrowheads...
5. If you could talk to any person in history, who would it be and why? Harriet Tubman, because she would give me advice on how to be braver/ George Washington/Anne Frank, because her life was interesting
6. If you could invent something to make the world a better place, what would it be? A mind control plane, a thought controlled remote, a giant filter for the ocean, a machine to settle all the countries' differences, a marshmallow suit, a force field......

7. I also used the check box feature to ask them "What technology do you have at home?"


Knowing what technology they have at home may help to make an exciting year!

For a more detailed interested inventory and information on how to help differentiate in the regular classroom for Gifted kids, check out this blog post:

Pre Assessment / Daily Preparation for GT Kids

Lost Artifacts and Zunal 2012

With a short study of Egypt, we are concentrating our next unit on "Lost Artifacts". There is a lot of talk in the last few years about artifacts from around the world which have been looted or lost through the spoils of war, or simply taken to another country for archeological study and then never returned. We became interested in some of the most famous of these artifacts and began our research! As we follow the history of the artifact, we will decide if the artifact should belong to the original country of origin or stay in its present home. The fourth grade scientists chose their lost artifact and will begin researching using a Webquest creator, Zunal.
Here are the WebQuests and a little bit about each artifact.

The Koh-i-Noor Diamond
How could a diamond, 136 carats, with such rich India and Persian history end up in the British Royal Crown Jewels? The curse of the Koh-i-Noor may explain part of that answer. The curse"states that "whoever owns the diamond, owns the world, but will also own all its misfortunes. Only a woman can own the diamond and be free from the curse."

The Bust of Nefertiti 
Nefertiti was the beloved Queen of ancient Egypt.  A bust of her liking was sculpted by the famous Egyptian artist:  Thutmose. A German archeologist, studying Egypt, smuggled the original bust out of the country. It remains now in the Berlin's Neues Museum, Germany.

The Artifacts of Machu Picchu
Machu Picchu is known as the Lost City of the Inca. As the Spaniards invaded Mexico and Central America in the 1500's, they burned and destroyed much of the rich history of the Inca. This city of Machu Picchu lies atop an 8,000 foot mountain and many of its remains went untouched by the Spanish Conquest. A Yale University professor "discovered" the remains and removed several artifacts to be placed in the Yale University Museum. With much controversy, the remains are being returned to Machu Picchu, a few at a time, through 2012.

Zodiac Ceiling
This amazing sculpture was at the root of one of the first controversies concerning the age of the world. It was believed created in 50 BC by the ancient Egyptians, and placed in the Temple of Hathor.
It was stripped from the Temple, during the Napoleon's campaign in Egypt (using dynamite),  and shipped to Paris, France where it remains to this day.

Priam's Treasure
This collection of jewels, gold and silver pots, pans, earrings and necklaces was discovered by German archeologist, Heinrich Schliemann. Schliemann was obsessed with finding the ancient lost city of Troy. Priam was the ruler of Troy during the Trojan War, so when the treasure was discovered, it was assumed to be part of Priam's buried wealth and thus Schliemann claimed to have discovered the remains of the city of Troy. The treasure exchanged owners after World War 2 as Russia took the treasure and kept it secret. They refuse to return it to Germany and say it is "payment" for the costs bestowed upon Russia by Hitler's invasion.

We hoped to use Dipity (a time line creator) as a product to display our research. It seemed to operate too slow. We used Google Docs instead and the scientist loved how easy it was to create and share.

This unit leads nicely into our visit to the Houston Museum of Natural Science where we will see an actual mummy as well as other artifacts from Egypt and the world.

In the lab we explored "Pharoah's Chambers" and built a model of a pyramid. We experimented to find out how the ancient Egyptians allowed light to shine in the pyramids so that they could properly decorate and honor their dead within the tomb.

 When the actual building of the chambers is complete, the scientist try to reflect the light from the flashlight, directly into the tomb using the pathway from the outside.

It was amazing to see the mathematical / geometric relationship between the placement of the mirrors.
We had a great opportunity to discuss parallel and perpendicular as well as the angles created by these lines.

Nice work!

2012 Science Challenge

I found a great site which offers a contest to the best innovative design. We entered the challenge two years ago and the scientists designed a game that could be played on Mars. They had to learn all about Mars: its gravity, red soil, atmosphere..etc.. and take those factors in to consideration when creating their idea.


The challenge we accepted this year is called Animal Smarts. The students were challenged to design a toy or game that would enhance the life of a zoo animal or pet which was suited to that animal's particular intelligence. Students chose an animal and watched videos of the animal in its habitat or "playing". This gave them ideas for a toy or game to design for that animal.

Kids Science Challenge is funded by the National Science Foundation. I like it because the website gives great background for each of the projects. They supply video and activities that can be used to help understand the challenge. The students don't actually have to make the design, just explain and diagram their ideas on paper.
We have some great ideas and we are sending them in next week.

One of our activities that we completed with the unit was to test our short term memory. We compared our short term memory to that of a chimp by trying to remember the order of digits from 1 - 9 after seeing them for a short time.

CSI does CSI! 5th Grade

We had some interesting events take place at the CSI Lab last week. Last Sunday a group of scientists held a meeting at our science lab. On Monday morning, our principal, Mr. Ogg, received 5 phone calls from different women claiming they left a skull and some money in the lab. Mr. Ogg took information from each of the women and turned the investigation over to the 5th graders to complete in CSI class on Wednesdays.



So we went to work gathering evidence from the scene. We found small hairs, fibers, a spot of a substance that looked like blood, a shoe print, money, a note and the skull. We labeled these carefully and then tested the fibers we found from the scene.

GATHERING EVIDENCE

MAKING A SLIDE OF A FIBER SAMPLE

CHECKING UNDER THE MICROSCOPES

COMPARE FIBER SAMPLES TO SAMPLES FROM THE SCENE

We wrote our observations in our journal. Students examined the photographs and information from the "claimants" and compared the information to the discoveries we were making.

TWO OF THE CLAIMANTS

GATHERING AND COMPARING INFORMATION

It was interesting comparing the different fibers under the microscope. They all looked different. It was easy to match the crime scene fabrics with the cotton fibers although at first they looked like wool.

COTTON: ALSO THE CRIME SCENE SAMPLE

MORE COTTON

WOOL

POLYESTER

Tomorrow we will test Chromatography of the ink left on the note at the scene and we will test the hairs that were found. We have information on all the claimants' pens and pets.

My favorite part of the lesson was when the scientists noticed connections and clues between the claimants by reading and thinking on their own. Parker noticed that two of the women in the photographs were wearing the same cap! Then, a group of students noticed that the women all looked alike! Joanna noticed that one of the woman's name was "Pam Entologist" and she was a paleontologist and therefore could have had a skull at the meeting!
Great thinking!
If you have any information about the person owning the skull and missing money, please leave a comment below.

6th Grade Invention Convention

We started our Inane Innocuous Invention Convention Project for 2012. Today we began building our inventions which are our own Rube Goldberg creations. Our invention must accomplish a simple everyday task and can not use batteries. We introduced Newton's First Law with a couple of demos:
Place a vase, metal pie pan, cardboard tube and egg in a tower. Quickly knock the pie pan horizontally and this should cause the egg to fall in to the vase. Egg Drop Experiment.

Sometimes the cardboard tube lands in the vase, too.

The second demo uses Inertia Rings balanced on top of a plastic soda bottle and then a small hex nut balanced on top of the ring.
We all tried grabbing the ring and allowing the hex nut to fall into the bottle.

These two activities show Newton's First Law. He said that since the egg is not moving while it sits on top of the tube it stays in place - ah, no force is acting upon it.  We applied enough force to the pie pan to cause it to zip out from under the cardboard tube. We knocked the support out from under the egg. The egg didn’t move because it was already stationary (not moving). Then, the force of gravity took over and pulled the egg straight down toward the center of the Earth.