Friday, April 30, 2010

4/30

We began the week with discussions of the Mollusk and Annelid worm phyla, which are more complex than those we discussed last week. On Tuesday, we began our external and internal exploration of earthworm anatomy (structures and functions). We learned a little about their body systems and anatomy, and we also learned important direction terms (anterior, posterior, dorsal, and ventral). We practiced our new vocabulary terms on gummy worms before we ate them. On Wednesday, we put our new knowledge of directions and earthworm anatomy to work. We did a live earthworm observation lab. Students had the opportunity to observe a real earthworm's movement, structures, and they even had to test the earthworm's reaction to environmental stimuli (being placed on its dorsal side, dry/wet paper towel, and presence of food). A special thank you goes out to all of those who brought these earthworms for us to observe!
I dissected an earthworm as a demonstration for students on Thursday. Students will be doing the real thing on Monday! On Friday, students reviewed information about earthworms by exploring several web sites.

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