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Wow...we had so much fun with this today! Thanks again to my friend Sherrie Roland for sharing this with me in a time of need!!! First I read from the Seeds of Science book and YouTube video clips that I posted on the blog yesterday. Then we explored our candy!  I bought a huge pack of Wonka candy .... with Nerds, BottleCaps, Sweet Tarts and Laffy Taffy in it.  We were able to see a reaction with all of the candy types except for the banana flavored Laffy Taffy.  I wonder if it wasn't sour enough? The reason for the reaction?   Sour candy is made with citric acid from fruits like lime/lemons.  When you mix the candy diluted in water with baking soda, it emits a gas.  It only emits the gas if it encounters an acid. We made a lot of observations - we noticed that a lot of the food coloring from the candy was diluted in the water.  We noticed that the baking soda sunk and made clumps on the candy.  We noticed many bubbles. Nerds made the most ...

Reflecting on how we came to name ourselves "AmericanScience" as HSS approaches, I noticed an interesting thing under our "About the FHSA" tab. The submission criteria for the Forum's Publication Prize are that the work be "on a topic in American Science ('American' loosely defined to include the western hemisphere, 'science' conservatively defined to exclude articles focusing on either the 'clinical and social history of medicine' or the 'history of technology')." "American loosely defined," "science conservatively defined." On the one hand, these criteria are easy to understand (and justify). The looseness of the former accommodates work on Central and South America that has no other group identity in HSS; the rigidness of the latter prevents encroachment from those working on topics (medicine, technology) with their own associations, annual meetings, and opportunities for prizes elsewhere. Definit...

When I was at the conference, I learned a new activity from the Seeds of Science Website.  It involves using the book Handbook of Interesting Ingredients to introduce that even candy has some interesting ingredients for flavoring!  There are several activities on the link below for using candy for science.  M&M chromatography Did you know you can separate the dyes used to color candy? All you need is a glass of water, a piece of candy, and some coffee filter paper. To find out more, click here . Floating M's and S's Some candy logos float in water. To find out how to float M's and S's, click here . Acid Test The sour taste in candy is caused by acid. Here's how you can use baking soda to test your candy for acid . I am planning on doing the Acid Test tomorrow.  I am using a large bag of Wonka Candy (we just finished the read aloud of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.)   That bag has sweet tarts, laffy taffy,  nerds and bottle caps.  My son and...

AmericanScience will be all over the place at the jointly-held annual meetings of HSS/SHOT/4S in Cleveland next week. We're looking forward to meeting and talking with our readers! Let us know your ideas for topics, guest posts, interview suggestions, and general feedback. Here's where to find us: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 4 HSS: 9:00 – 11:45 AM Blossom (4th Floor) "Costs and Benefits: Life Scientists and the Assessment of Wartime Technologies, from 1945 to the Vietnam War" Chair and Commentator: Karen Rader, Virginia Commonwealth University 1. Environmental Consciousness in the Cold War: Radioecologists, Nuclear Technology, and the Atomic Age, *Rachel Rothschild, Yale University 2. Quickening Nature’s Pulse: Mutation Plant Breeding at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Jacob Darwin Hamblin, Oregon State University 3. The Atomic Farmer in his Gamma Garden: Agricultural Research at the Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1948-1955, Helen Curry, Yale University 4. The Area S...

Wow...what a day!  I have completely loved learning all about the 3rd edition of FOSS - Full Option Science System.  A few of the changes include:  Smart board Resources, Science Notebooking embedded in the daily lesson plans, daily formative assessments that are focused and on point, outside activities for all investigations, streaming videos that match the curriculum, new revamped science stories with high quality non-fiction, and so much more!  If your district is getting ready to adopt in the coming year (2012) then pay close attention to the new FOSS modules.  I know we are hoping in Virginia to adopt it in many counties! Here are a few pictures of the event: Tonight I am going to a VIP event for Seeds of Science with David Pearson.  I am super excited about that! Oh, and I found the company that I bought the crystal scarecrow from - Educational Innovations.  They had a Christmas tree and a snowman.  I  bought a snowman for later....alth...

Oakland Police Arresting a Protestor, from the NY Times website. According to the NY Times and the Oakland Tribune , about 1,000 protesters clashed with Oakland police on Tuesday night.  The catalyst appears to have been a decision to clear members of “Occupy Oakland” from Frank Ogawa Plaza, where they had been camped out for some time.  What’s remarkable about this story is the level of violence that appears to have been involved.  The NY Times piece includes a number of graphic videos and photos of injuries that protestors sustained at the hands of riot police.   This post is not about science, but there is a historical component to the story.  I was immediately struck watching these videos by how differently things played out in Oakland (and, also, Atlanta) than they have in New York, where the city has allowed members of “Occupy Wall Street” to remain in Zuccotti Park.  The New York Times makes an interesting point, which I’ll quote here:  “At a ...

I am on my way to the NSTA regional conference in Hartwood Conneticut with my science gal Sherrie to learn more about FOSS 3rd edition.  I am attending three days of workshops to learn more about FOSS's new editions as well as attending a VIP event with the Seeds of Science team and Dr. David Pearson.  I can't wait to come back and blog about what I learn.  Maybe I will even have a moment to blog while I am there!  If not, see you in a few days....

From time to time, I just wanna have fun! Today was one of those days.  Last year I bought this Halloween scarecrow from a science catalog on clearance and actually held on to it until now.... I knew it would grow crystals, but wasn't sure if my students would. So I brought it out at 9;30 during morning meeting and asked the kids what they thought would happen if I poured the mystery liquid into the basin of the scarecrow.  I got responses like:  it will explode (remember the mentos?), it will change colors, it will fly off, it will cause a chemical reaction of some sort... I put the liquid in, and we made a time line during the day.  This is what it looked like: Nothing glamorous or huge, just a simple time line where we recorded our observations.  After lunch, I decided to name the "fuzzy things" that were growing so the kids were know they were crystals.  It was a fun, engaging activity that we made notes on during transition times.  The end r...

We have spent several days observing animal pictures, video clips and even real crayfish!  Now I wanted the kids to turn their observations into a paragraph - an integrated writing experience. (We used the photo cards from the Variations and Adaptations kit from Seeds of Science and lesson 2.5. ) First we introduced a claim statement : A ------------------- has many adaptations that help it survive in it's habitat. That would become our topic sentence for our paragraph. Then we  brainstormed three adaptations for each animal and how it helps them survive.  And then we talked about closing statements - need to wrap it up and stay on topic. Next the students wrote and illustrated a paragraph that I could then grade for composing, written expression and usuage and mechanics as well as science content.  Here are some samples:

'Tis the season for conference presentations. A time when people are compelled to make grand statements and mobilize snappy visuals to back them up. In this short post I'm hoping to spark some conversation about one such resource: the Google Ngram Viewer . For the uninitiated, the Ngram Viewer works like this: through a relatively simple user interface, you plug in one or more terms. With the click of a button, a graph pops up that tracks the frequency with which they appear in a wide range of books since 1800. C'mon, try it -- everyone's doing it. I mean, who doesn't crave quick answers to the question of 'zombies' versus 'vampires?': But like sugar and caffeine -- two of my addictions -- the buzz wears off quickly, often leaving me more disoriented than before I imbibed. In all seriousness, this is a tool that invites as many questions as it answers, especially when tracking concepts across different languages and cultures (although you can sea...

This week we have been knee deep in studying behavioral and structural adaptations in animals. We have watched video clips, looked a picture cards and played games.  We have (admittedly) been mixing and mashing from FOSS and Seeds of Science as well as some other resources.  But that's Virginia - our curriculum just doesn't always flow. Today, we observed the real deal - a live crayfish.  Taken from the unit "Structures of Life" by FOSS we spent some time with our crayfish.  We started by looking at the body in this book "Investigating Crayfish."   This book is an awesome story about testing the environment of the crayfish to see whether he prefers gray rocks (to match his color) or white rocks.  It also has an excellent example of a diagram of a crayfish. I put it up on the document camera so that we could really see the names of the structures on our crayfish.  Then I introduced the real guys in small basins of water.  Each science gro...

Adaptations...all animals have them. It is how they survive in the wild after all.  Without adaptations, the animals would die out quickly!  Here in Virginia, we have to teach the difference between structural and behavioral adaptations.  So what does that mean? I try to teach my students that structural adaptations have to do with the "structure" or "outside" of the animal.  These are things we can observe - like feet, eyes, skin coverings, teeth and limbs.  A great book to read to your students when you are teaching this is called Mystery Mouths .  It is a book published by Seeds of Science and has excellent photographs that show different mouths and how they match herbivores (flat teeth for grinding plants), carnivore (canine, sharp teeth for tearing meat) and omnivore (flat and sharp teeth for eating both).  If you want to have even cooler activities the Variation and Adaptation (also from Seeds of Science)has some awesome activities using pic...

Several months ago (June 2010) I graduated from Lesley University's Online Masters Program in Science Education. It was a wonderful program that was developed by TERC and supported by some amazing professors. (Sally Crissman and Sue Doubler to name a few)  In this program, we had to participate in our own inquiry science investigations for each content area.   http://www.lesley.edu/soe/science/   It's a GREAT program if you are pondering getting your masters - online and I felt like I was truly learning good stuff!   (Hi Jaime! a friend I met during the program)  When we got to the STEM section, we studied the effect of building structures and earthquakes.  At the time I was taking the course, we experienced not only the Haiti earthquake but the one in Chile as well.  It was quite interesting because the results were extremely different.   That's my son Jack helping me out! We needed to make structures and test them on our own "earthquake...

SPECIAL EVENT: The Secret Science Club is teaming up with the  Imagine Science Film Festival for “Controlled Experiment,” a night of science-inspired short films. Documentary. Music Video. Animation. Don’t miss some of the festival’s coolest, most futuristic entries , including Transgenic Spider Goats, Stanley Milgram: The City and The Self, Protein Expression, E. Chromi, Creature Cast: Footage From the Deep , Fossil Carrion Feeders, and  Four Letter Words. Plus! --Groove to cinematic sounds and live music by Victoire --Sample our animated cocktail of the night, the Stop Motion --Meet filmmakers and ISFF artistic director Alexis Gambis When :   Monday, October 17, 8 pm   Where :   The Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn . FREE! Just bring your smart self. Doors open at 7:30 PM. 21+. The Imagine Science Film Festival runs from October 14 to 21 at venues all around the city. Visit here for a complete listing of event...

Freebie Friday on www.TeachingBlogAddict.com  means an excellent way to share with more of you my blog.  My blog is mainly about instruction - how I use science notebook and literacy strategies in my fourth grade classroom.  I am an inquiry based teacher who loves to learn with my kids.  If you want to see more, please scroll on down and peek into the past two months of my blog.  There is a lot to see! For others: you may only be interested in grabbing the goodie! I get that too...so here it is:   http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Exit-Cards-101 Have a great weekend...I am a super busy sports mom this weekend.  No time for play...drive, watch and cheer!

My friend, Kip Bisignano, (a Delta/FOSS Sales Rep for Virginia, Maryland and DC) came to play with my class this week. We are presenting together at the Virginia Association of Science Teachers (VAST) in November on reading strategies and science. So yesterday, we used the book and the strategies with the class. The results were amazing! We started the day by having the kids read the book: Blue Whales and Buttercups by Seeds of Science. It is an excellent book that has the students reading about how animals and plants are similar and different. They eventually get to the point that they are all related - due to the fact that all living things are made up of cells. My students loved the book and we had a great discussion! Next we reread page 12 and 13 and brainstormed how the animals fox and wolf are similar and different using a great graphic developed by Kip. You can see how my student Darlene was able to compare two characteristics easily using this forma...