Pseudo Day 125 – More GIST

Science 8 – May 26

More GIST summaries from other science 8 classes.  These summaries were better than the previous groups.  The previous class is smaller but the kids are quite the handful and are getting difficult to manage at times.

Pseudo Day 122 – Natural Fluid Systems

Science 8 – May 14

Students learned about fluid systems today, both constructed and natural.  I had the kids work in groups and create GIST summaries.  For gist summaries I usually have the kids summarize a paragraph or short section of text using exactly 20 words.  The idea is that it forces the kids to pick out the really important parts of the text and be clear on definitions and context.

Pseudo Day 110 – Inquiry into Floatation

Science 8 – April 22

We are now working through a unit on fluids.  To start things off, we are focusing on the idea that some things float while others don’t.  Question Focus: Not everything floats.  This leads to questions such as:

• do heavier things float?
• what is mass?
• what is density?
• do more dense things float?
• does it matter what the thing is floating in?