Friday, February 19, 2016
12:30- 1:00; 30 min.
Science enrichment:
Space and natural selection -
Ben wanted to share an unusual version of the story about three pigs, and we read the book together. He then completed his science worksheet, on planets and space, which was left over from his science class on Thursday. He then described his favorite animal from his poster on the eras of life, and from his description I guessed he had a slight misunderstanding on natural selection. We finished the class by discussing how animals started on this planet and how they adapted and changed to meet the different challenges of each era on the poster.
Bobby was so very eager to get going on his galaxy poster! We taped together some 6 sheets of black paper to get a nice background, and gathered some more material. Bobby is intrigued by the structures of galaxies, and formulated some rather incisive questions. He is also looking forward to writing informative text to accompany the images he has collected.
Bobby continued collecting material for his Galaxy poster. While searching images of spirals, barred spirals, and ellipticals, I'd explain what we're looking at in the images. Bobby immediately recognized the dust lanes that characterize a spiral galaxy seen edge-on, and when discussing the structures of galaxies he knew that supermassive black holes are found at the centers of all galaxies. We also studied the Hubble Deep Field, in which one can see hundreds of galaxies at a distance of about 12 billion light years from us.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Bobby did a very good job of staying focused even though on both sides of him his friends were engaged in interactive learning games (we were in the computer room). I could tell he wanted to learn about galaxies, but I could also tell he wanted to engage with the math game happening on his right. I let him get involved for a while (he was doing excellent mental math!), and then I managed to find an interactive learning game for him for the last few minutes of class.
Gwendolyn finished painting Jupiter using a real image as template. She asked several incisive questions while painting, and I told her a few things about Jupiter's moons (the four Galilean moons and tens of other smaller ones). We studied a graphic that showed the relative sizes of the main Solar System moons, and it's always interesting to see how large comparatively Earth's moon is (this is a direct consequence of its formation, at least according to the latest theories). Gwendolyn then painted Neptune and Mars, again using real-life images from which to copy the cloud (Neptune) and geologic (Mars) patterns.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Ah, today was not as good a day as a few weeks ago. I felt there was a change in Gwendolyn, but - not being an expert in child psychology - I was not able to pinpoint it. It took me a while to get back into some sort of groove with her, but toward the end of class, she started asking some questions, and that was nice. But I must say I felt a tad uncomfortable, and she probably sensed it.
Since today was President's Day and Baylie is doing excellently in science, we did some enrichment. We created an "If I Were President" book all about Baylie. We both had a lot of fun doing it and she has some great ideas about if she were president!
Some of the other teachers of the younger kids had arranged for fun educational Friday activities, so I allowed Bobby to participate in those (seeing as everybody else was). We will continue with galaxies next week.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Friday Funday was lots of fun! It was great to observe the kids, seeing their different personalities come through.
Friday, February 12, 2016
1:00- 1:30; 30 min.
Science enrichment:
geological eras-
Ben and I explored his poster of the different geological eras of earth. We discussed the different life forces associated to each - from the first protozoa, to the age of the mammals. Ben was eager to test me on my knowledge of each era, and we marked how evolution moved from age to age. For the last few minutes we spoke of deep sea fish.
Friday, February 5, 2016
1:00- 1:30; 30 min.
Science enrichment:
States of Matter -
Ben and I constructed a story around his current Lego creation. He told me about drone fighters that have the ability to shoot cannons filled with lava. Since lava is liquid rock, it would have to have special properties. We talked about how to convert the rock to a gas, and condensate it back to a liquid only when it was necessary. Temperature would be an issue. We discussed what kind of container could hold and transport lava, and Ben determined that the container had to be made of diamond.
Bobby was so eager to start on his new project: A poster on galaxies! We looked at Hubble's Tuning Fork, where the galaxies are arranged according to their morphology - the great Edwin Hubble was the first one to notice that galaxies had these different shapes, and tried to make almost taxonomical sense out of them. The main galaxy shapes are: elliptical, spiral, barred spiral, and irregular. So the galaxy shape is prefaced by a letter (E, S, Sb) and a number (usually 0 to 6) which defines the amount of ellipticity in the case of ellipticals (0 is more round, 6 is more squashed) and the tightness of the spirals in the case of the S and Sb galaxies. We started gathering material for Bobby's poster - we found excellent images of a barred spiral and an elliptical thus far, in addition to a very informative diagram of the structure of a typical spiral galaxy, showing the central bulge and nucleus, the disk, and the halo.
Session Minutes
60
Minutes Student Attended
60
Lesson Comments
Bobby was so pooped today! But he worked very well for the first forty-five or so minutes of class, and he really was very eager to get the material for his poster. He was trying so hard to stay focused, but he himself confessed his tiredness. So, since we had concentrated so hard for the majority of the time, I thought he might enjoy learning a card trick (since he'd been talking about them all day long ... as always, I try to inject a spot of learning in extracurricular activities as well, and we talked a bit about illusions, and how they encourage critical thinking).
