Mrs. Clements' Super Science Blog

Monday: Ecology introduction. We watched a short movie on Food chains after looking at a real life example.

Tuesday: I had a substitute and students worked on ecology vocabulary words for this unit.

Wednesday: We took notes on energy transfer in ecosystems. Three inportant concepts are the food chain, food web, and the energy pyramid. Students got a food web worksheet to try and label.

Thursday: We reviewed the food web worksheet and looked at the levels of organization in the biosphere.

Friday: The entire 7th grade was split up so we could reinforce some concepts from the first semester. This kind of reinforcement will definitely help when it comes to testing time in April. Ask you student who they had for science on Friday, and what they did in class!

Monday: Monstrous Mutations lab! How much fun did we have peeling clementines with our strange mutations!

Tuesday: We were in the computer lab learning about a modern example of evolution in action, the peppered moth of England.

Wednesday: Review of Peppered Moth answers and groups worked to come up with good test questions for the evolution unit.

Thursday: We reviewed for our test by playing jeopardy, with the exception that 4th and 8th period had to stop the game due to behavior that was not appropriate!!

Friday: EVOLUTION TEST

On Tuesday we had a short quiz to see how we were doing on understanding our evolution unit. Thursday and Friday we reveiewed and went over some concepts that have been confusing to you all. Remember natural selection depends on genetic variation in the population. Please continue studying your evolution notes. We had to delay our lab on Monstrous Mutations, but we will do this Monday.

***Evolution Test next Thursday!!

This morning started with a practice writing assessment for all 6th and 7th graders. After the test, we had short classes, but we still had time to finish our evolution notes with the evidence for evolution. We saw a cool short video on a fossil of an early fish that had fingers!

Today we finished the classs data collection for the Battle of the Beaks Lab II. Using the data set for the whole class, you will graph the data for large beaks and small beaks and then compare the 2 graphs. Does beak size make a difference for survival?

HW: Finish this lab and turn it in on Thursday.

Note: short classes tomorrow due to the writing assessment!

Battle of the Beaks- Part II: Today we compared large and small beaks by trying to “eat” more seeds. after recording our own data in 4 trials, we started to collect class data. Having a larger data set will give us better results. Remember, we are modeling what really happened on the Galapagos Islands when researchers tried to see if variation in beak size affected survival of finches. We have a holiday on Monday, but on Tuesday we will finish up this lab.

NO SCHOOL MONDAY!  Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Harsh times on the Galapagos Islands- Today we read about two researchers who have studied the finches of the Galapagos Islands for 30 years. This couple found that the beak size is variable in one particular species of finch. All the beaks were not exactly the same size. These researchers wanted to find out if even small differences in beak size could affect the survival of the finches. When a severe drought hit the Galapagos, the amount of available seeds for the birds decreased. Students worked on graphing two sets of data from these researchers, one on seed availability and one on population of finches. The research showed that when fewer seeds were available, the finch population went down. Tomorrow we will do a lab in which you will compare how beaks of different sizes can affect the feeding success of the finches. Evolution in action!

Battle of the Beaks! We did a lab today that I hope everyone enjoyed. Students pretended to be finches with different types of beaks. The “finches” had to compete for a limited food supply. Whose beak type was the best for picking up the different foods? After trying out several foods, the now practiced finches compteted with their peers for all types of foods. I hope you learned that variations in an organism’s body structure may provide an advantage for survival.

Home work: Finish the Battle of the Beaks I Lab, answering all questions in complete sentences.

Sorry to have missed you for these two days. On Monday your assignment was to write a catchy article on Charles Darwin and the ideas he developed on his journey around the world. On Tuesday the class read about how natural selection works in the world. We see examples today of natural selection in action when we witness insects that are becoming resistant to pesticides and bacteria that have adapted to become resistant to antibiotics. You should understand now how populations can evolve into new species. Since we have covered most of the content for this chapter on evolution, we will be doing some labs for the next few days…

Check out  my new look for the blog!  The picture is of the Galapagos Islands, where Charles Darwin visited in the 1800s. On Thursday we talked about adaptations, took some  notes on the history of evolutionary theories, and read about Charles Darwin and his voyage around the world. Stay tuned for more on what the result of the journey was…

Homework tonight: read the rest of chapter 7, section 2 and fill out the section of your notes entitled “Four Parts of Natural Selection”.