November 30

Today Mr. Finley was very nice and let us redo our cell labeling quiz. On the homework last night the first thing he said was to go over the things you don't know. He expected us to do that so it could help us on the quiz! He is the best!

We then opened our homework which was to make a slide for our activity. Everyone opened their slide and put it into one presentation. To add each slide to one presentation you have to open each slide seperately. You can just drag the slide onto the whole presentation.
The basic thing we are doing today is putting all the slides togather and looking at them and making them readable and understandable for 3rd graders.

He also showed us tricks to do on notebook.....
If you bring up a shape you can change the colors.
You can animate it by going to properties. There you can look at all the things you can to with it.
If you go to page recording you can make it record and when the presentation comes up it will play just as you draw/type it.
If you draw on the smart board you can right click and recognize it and it will show up as if you had typed it. It you had a question and answer you could send the answer to the back and that is where your answer would be.

You click the picture tab on the side and then it gives you the list. In the Lesson Activity tool kit it has a lot of cool things in it. You would go to activities like multiple choice
Ther is image match where you can draw words in and swee if you are correct.
Ther is note reveal where you can pull to see the answer. YOu can use all of these tools to make quiz things for your presentation. THEY ARE VERY COOL!!!

The picture that is up is an example of a multiple choice quiz that you could use

RK

11/29/10

In class today, Mr. Finley checked our homework and we had time to study for the quiz. After that,we took the quiz on the parts of the cell. After we took the quiz, we got together in groups to create a smartnotebook presentation on the characteristics of life.

*** This isn't my graded blog!!! ***

M.K.B.

Charateristics of Life

Sadly Mr. Finley could not give us a pop quiz today :( But the good news is that we have a quiz on Monday that's harder! The quiz is on labeling cells and knowing where they are. Today in science class Mr. Finley lit a candle and tyred to prove that fire can reproduce, and he proved it right that fire can reproduce. Today we looked at a slide show and took notes on it. a lot of us did not finish so it is now homework yay! In the slides it talked about how all living things share some basic properties. for instance, all living things share Cellular Organization, reproduction, Metabolism (obtain and Use energy), Homeostasis, Heredity, Responsiveness, Growth and Development, and Adapt through evolution. the slide also gives examples and definition of each part of characteristics of life.
Mr. Finley said something about are homework that we did on wed. He said something like "for your homework you did last night on seeing if you agree with the book and you think the facts, and that there are only 4 characteristics in living things, but if you didn't agree with the book and you think there are more then 4 characteristics then ,you had to give me more examples and reasons why." He also said to think about the 4 characteristics because we are doing more with them on Monday after the "Pop Quiz"
*REMEMBER WE HAVE A POP QUIZ ON MONDAY ON LABELLING CELLS AND KNOWING WHAT THEY ARE. THE CELLS YOU HAVE TO LABEL ARE THE ANIMAL CELL AND THE PLANT CELL SO STUDY HARD AND GOOD LUCK ON MONDAY!*

Tuesday, November 23 2010

At first today Mr. Finley told us about the blog rubric. It is now up and running so bloggers should use that to help with blogging. If you think your blog does not correct, you can change before the November. Also, we now have to write two comments on the blog. This does not mean that we need paragraphs. You can ask questions, answer questions, and/or add information forgotten by author. Sentences like, "I like this blog," is not allowed. November and December have been grouped together so you need two comments during the rest of this month and next month.


We then talked about the two websites we had to write the critique on. If you did not write down any new parts in either of the websites then that is something you would want to do. We then went around the room and listened to what people liked or disliked about the two sites.

Some things they said were:

• The cells alive gave a good dicription of the different parts
• The cells alive broke it down
• Cells alive was eye catching
• some people liked how Inside of a cell zoomed in with a video

These sites are now resources we should use. These are located in the cells page on the school website.

We then got books dealing with the characteristics of life. The book is "Cells and Heredity." We went to pages 9 and 10. We read them and then answer this question:

• We argue that four characteristics of life is not enough (the books states so). Through your own research, see if you need to add any to the list they have. If you do, list what they are and what they mean.

Most people did not finish so Mr. Finley is going to scan these pages onto the computer and post them on his website so that we can complete it for homework.

Blog by: Mark J Van der Merwe

Animal and Plant Cells

Today in class we first went over the science questions we did in class on Friday and for homework over the weekend. With our groups we went over the questions. the questions were, for the grass lab, why did our grass have to be very thin? And what is a cell? Why is it considered building blocks? Our group got the answer for why did our grass had to be very thin, because if the piece of grass was very thin, you wouldn't be able to see all of the cells as well as you did with the thin piece of grass. Our group answer for what is a cell? And why is it considered a building block, is a cell is what makes up all living things, and the reason why it is concidered a building block is that if you see a group of cells in the microscope, it looks like bricks holding the specimen you are looking at togeather. For the onion lab the questions were, why didn't we see any chloroplasts in the onion? Our answer for that was because the onion was grown underground, it doesn't need the chloroplasts because chloroplasts need the sun to produsce the energy into that cell, and underground there is no sun. For the second question, we were told to make a table compareing animal and plant cells.

My table's table was,
Animal: nucleus, mitochondria, and it has a cell membrane.

Plant: has a cell wall, chloroplasts, and a vacuole.

Both: are living things, and both are cells.

We wrote all of our combined answers on a white board and shared it with the class. We found out that we needed to add that, cells are also building blocks because they all work as one unit and that every thing depends on every thing else. Next we went over the charts that we made to compare and contrasting the animal and plant cells.

Our Class' chart was:

Animal: Had to dye the cheek cell, are bigger than plant cells, were more circular.

Plant: had cell wall, viens were seen, most plants have chloroplasts.

Both: had nucleus, have cell membrane, have mitochondria.

We have just discovered that the reason there was no chloroplasts in the onion skin because the skin is underground, oppose to the onion leaves, which means that the chloroplastsare in the onion leaves.

By: VF!!

Today in class we worked on Onions cells. Then once you had finished finding the cells you had to answer two questions for grass cells, and one question for onion, and then you had to make a graph based on the animal, and the plant cell. In my group i had so much trouble trying to find cell, when Mr. Finley came over he told to make sure that the measurment for the hieght was as high as your pinkie finger. When we did that we noticed that it was so much better t0 see the cells. As the process for the clips with the onions, you have to have a very small sliced piece of the onion, and then you had to put one small drop of iodine, and then we put it under the microscope, and explored looking for cells.

Onion Cell

The first thing we did in class today was we discussed our homework. Our homework was to make a list of the same and different things that are in a cell. We did a plant cell and animal cell. Here are some of the things that are in common: Lysosomes, Necleus, Cytoskeleton, Ribsomes, Cell membranes, Mitochondria, Golgi appalatus, and Endoplasmic reticulum.The just plant things are cell wall chloroplasts vacuole. The next thing we did was we labled our grass sketches from yesterday. We noticed that we can see the middle of the piece of grass (the line down the middle) and when we switched to high power we saw it alot bigger. You could see the water droplets on it. Then we re-drew what we noticed.

Something I learned was we didn't fully click in the high power, therefore I couldn't see anything. I also learned the difference between plant cells and animal cells. Animal cells don't have cell walls. Finally, I noticed that I could see more on low focus than on high focus.