4/24

We wrapped up our chapter on protists and fungi this week and took the chapter test on Tuesday. On Wednesday, students attended the career fair. In general, students seemed to really enjoy the trip. There were many interesting sessions, and many presenters even gave out goodies to the kids.

We have finally made our way into to the animal kingdom! Students explored the diversity of the animal kingdom with an activity on Thursday. They had to list animals that fit into given categories, and then as students shared answers with the class, they had to cross off any animal that was listed by another group. We discovered that there are WAY more animals than we could have anticipated. Remember, though....most animals (more than 95%) are actually invertebrates! We did an overview of the characteristics of the animal kingdom, and we spent some time on Friday discussing and observing the simplest animals: the sponges. Next week, we will do a "Porifera" lab and talk even more about simple invertebrates.

4/17

We began the week by discussing and identifying the important structures of three common protoza: the amoeba, euglena, and paramecium. Students had the opportunity to view prepared slides AND live cultures of these three protists as well. On Wednesday we discussed the general characteristics of the Fungi kingdom and its four major groups. In our fungi lab on Thursday, students had the chance to observe two types of fungi in more detail: yeast and mushrooms. Students dissected the mushroom and used the microscope to identify the hyphae in the stem and the spores in the gills. Students worked to review independently on Friday for the protist and fungi test (which will be given on Tuesday).

4/9

On Monday, students were asked to design an experiment to determine where bacteria can be found in our school. Students had to construct a question to investigate, make a hypothesis, and then swab their selected samples into a Petri dish. Students took swabs of locations including teachers' desks, shoes, computer keyboards, doorknobs, and much more! We let the dishes will incubate over for a few days and then checked our results on Thursday. Most students were surprised by their findings. Ask to see what they found!

We reviewed our protist notes on Wednesday by playing bingo. Students were also introduced to some of the protists that we will be viewing in our lab next week (amoeba, paramecium, and euglena).