6th Grade Summer School - Tour of Japan

Let's take a virtual tour of Japan. Choose one of these sites, and explore:

Panoramic Tours: http://blog.panedia.com/tag/japan-virtual-tour/

Tokyo: http://www.us-japan.org/edomatsu/

Travel Guide (try learning some japanese phrases):http://milvetstravel.net/tokyo.html

Photo Tour: http://www.artisandevelopers.com/web/tokyo/

360 Cities: http://www.360cities.net/area/japan

Or use google earth.

Report back with what you find.

6/2/09 - 6th Grade - Decomposers

Mrs. Sheffie left us a link to Access Kids Corner. We are going to read up on decomposers, and see how they fit into the food web. Lets read through this page together, and when we're ready we can test our knowledge with a game.

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/content/animals/kidscorner/foodchain/decomposers.htm

5/18/09 - 6th Grade Plate Tectonics

Today we are going to explore plate tectonics (the cause of earthquakes and volcanoes).

Vocab:
Ridge -
Plate -
Convection -
Ring of Fire -
Pangea -

Slide 1 of this presentation explains plate movement as convection:http://www.earth.northwestern.edu/people/seth/107/t9conclude.htm

This interactive activity explains plate tectonics: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aso/tryit/tectonics/#

Sites:

http://www.seismo.unr.edu/ftp/pub/louie/class/100/plate-tectonics.html

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/geology/tectonics.html

5/12/09 - 6th Grade - Heat Transfer

Here are a couple of interactive websites on heat transfer:

See if you can make the heat in the beakers equal in 5 minutes, using one of the materials (glass, aluminum, copper, or steel). Which one works the fastest? What does this mean?

http://www.explorelearning.com/index.cfm?method=cResource.dspView&ResourceID=388

Try this experiment, to heat up the water, using different metals:
http://www.chem.iastate.edu/group/Greenbowe/sections/projectfolder/flashfiles/thermochem/heat_metal.swf

What is more important? - Is it the mass of the metal, or the material you chose?


If you have come up with some questions, after these activities, do a little research on heat energy:

http://www.physics4kids.com/files/thermo_intro.html

3/10/09 - 6th Grade - Owl Pellet Dissection

Today we are going to learn a little bit about owls, to prepare you for your owl pellet dissection. As a group, we will learn about how owls hunt, how they digest their food, and we can even dissect a virtual owl pellet on the Kidwings website:
http://www.kidwings.com/owlpellets/#

At the end of the class period, if there is time, we will watch this video on how Snow Owls hunt in the winter using sonar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yps7pgq1TAk

2/10/09 - 6th Grade - African American Scientists and Inventors

The following web pages tell the stories of some of the most famous African American Scientists and inventors.
http://www.infoplease.com/spot/bhmscientists1.html
https://webfiles.uci.edu/mcbrown/display/faces.html
Scholastic Top Ten:http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/inventors/

Webquest:http://www.hardin.k12.ky.us/jhhs/jhhslmc/Black%20History%20Webquest/default.htm

10/14/08 6th grade Microorganisms

Mrs. Sheffie found a website to work on with her class, today. I turned on the computer, and she was off. The site, biology4kids.com, had a lot of well organized pages about cells and organisms. She showed the site to her students, and talked with them about microorganisms. Her lecture followed the site, and hit the important points about microorganism types and structure, when they were first discovered, and followed up with a quiz on the page.

Microorganisms site: http://www.biology4kids.com/files/micro_main.html

9/30/08 - Roman Life

We started this morning with a bbc.com website about family and child life in ancient Rome. Ms. Sheffie led a discussion about the site, and asked students to read about and then reflect on what life would be like as a child in Rome. Students were surprised to learn that schooling was only offered to males of privilege who lived in major cities, whose parents could pay tuition. We shifted gears to focus on Roman Mythology, by showing a PowerPoint presentation that was created by a Teacher at King George V school in Hong Kong. The school has British roots, and continues to teach class in English. The presentation was very well prepared, and offered a description of all of the major Gods and Goddesses, and their role in Roman Mythology. To reinforce the material, we had students take a quiz online to test their knowledge as a class, and asked questions about the roman family life website.

bbc.com Roman Family Life: http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/romans/families.shtml
Roman Mythology Powerpoint: http://www.kgv.edu.hk/history/Y8/Superstitions_and_Beliefs/ROMAN%20GODS.ppt
Roman Gods and Goddesses Quiz: http://www.quia.com/rr/149909.html