I've been helping my students leave quality comments. We follow these guidelines:

1. Quote something that stands out from the blog.

2. Say why this stands out or make a personal connection to the post from your own experience.

3. At the end write something complimentary.

I've also come across this great video from Ms. Yollis' class that gives great ideas for leaving great comments:

Cheetah: Nature's Speed Machine

Did you know that cheetahs can accelerate from 0 to 60 MPH faster than a Ferarri? The amazing cheetah is the perfect example of natural specialization. They're made for speed. Such a beautiful animal deserves a closer look! Infographic designed by Jacob O'Neal

How We Measure

Visual notes from Cathy N Davidson's great book, _Now You See It_ chapter on Assessment: How We Measure. (There are more ways to measure learning than just grades! -Mr. G)

by Giulia Forsythe, Photo license: Attribution Noncommercial Share Alike - Some rights reserved

This video explains perfectly why we need to get feedback from each other!

Critique and Feedback: The Story of Austin's Butterfly from Expeditionary Learning on Vimeo.

Building Excellence in Student Work Through Critique and Revision



This six-minute video has been transformational for teachers and students K-12 in giving a clear picture of how student work can improve through focused critique. It shows the evolution of a scientific illustration of a butterfly through multiple drafts toward a high-quality final product.

Hello Arden, Luella, and Williston students!

We wanted to share a few pointers for commenting on our blogs for when it's our turn to get feeback comments on our posts. These are things you may or may not know!

Before we start please tell us which school you are from and leave us a link back to your blog so that we can comment back.

The posts in the middle of mrgonzalez.org are Mr. G's, the teacher, me, so no need to comment on them. :)

On the right hand side of this blog are all 134 students in Mr. G's, my, Science classes! The first three classes are 6th graders and the last two classes, when you scroll way down, are the two 8th grade classes. It would be really great if you could help us out by getting to as many of our students as you can when it's our turn to get feedback by scrolling down and choosing as many different kids as you can. If you only choose kids from the top then the classes are the bottom of this blog page will be left out!

You also might notice on the left hand side if you scroll down a bit you'll see a section called Student Entries. That section shows you the most recent blog posts. That way you can choose a post by title to make sure you're reading something you will find interesting. But please choose ALL at the bottom of the list to see many more, and varied, topics! Otherwise, only the most recent posters will get feedback.

Thank you for reading this and happy commenting! 

Getting a global audience...

Our blog is going to be part of a Quadblogging experience!  

Schools sign up to work in a team to look at each others blogs and add comments/feedback. We are participating in a quad with two schools in the US and one in the UK. Each week for January, February and March all students will look and feedback on the blog from the timetabled school. Here is the timetable and the UK school will be the first blog that the other three schools will look at.

Week beginning:

14/1/13 - Arden, UK (Solihull, West Midlands)

21/1/13 - Chimacum Middle School, USA

28/1/13 - Luella Middle School, USA (in Georgia)

4/2/13 - Williston Central School, USA  7 and Williston Central School 8 (in Vermont)

11/2/13 - Arden, UK

18/2/13 - Chimacum Middle School, USA

25/2/13 - Luella Middle School, USA

4/3/13 - Williston Central School, USA

11/3/13 - Arden, UK

18/3/13 - Chimacum Middle School, USA

25/3/13 - Luella Middle School, USA & Williston Central School, USA

These are rotifers! They look like they're dancing! lol

I found this photo on this blog: Mr. Ralph Grimm

This is the life cycle of the brine shrimp commonly known as sea monkey. Click on this link to see the life cycle as an interactive graphic where you can click on each stage of the life cycle and read what is happening there. There is also great info on this site as well.

I, Mr. G, and the 6th graders are back! Time to settle in to the routine that will carry us along this great school year. I wrote about the Mt Saint Helens experience a bit on my teacher blog.

Here are some pictures I took from the Johnston Ridge Observatory:

https://plus.google.com/photos/112965335069893623087/albums/5794141488999985265?authkey=CKPYmr7D5tDsdw" target="_blank">https://plus.google.com/photos/112965335069893623087/albums/5794141488999985265?authkey=CKPYmr7D5tDsdw

This week 6th graders are going to have a great time at Camp Cispus! Tuesday we will take the four hour bus ride to the Gifford Pinchot National Forest where Camp Cispus resides. At Cispus 6th graders will go on hikes, visit a creek, learn about native plants, attempt a low ropes challenge course, and visit Mt Saint Helens! We'll be back Friday so our Week 3 blogging challenge posts might be late. We're also a bit behind on commenting but we'll try to catch up and read our student blogging challenge middle school friends' posts to leave comments. The good news that 8th graders are still here! So 8th graders, work on your Week 3 blogging challenge when you get a chance this week and visit our blog pals and read their stuff to leave them great comments!

1. 
   

   My wife and two kids are awesome!

   
   


2. 
   

   I wear glasses cause they're cool. Yeah, and also because I can't see a thing without them!

   
   


3. 
   

   I love pork, yeah. Oh and chicken too. Steak's pretty good sometimes. Oh and salad, too.

   
   


4. 
   

   Science rules.

   
   


5. 
   

   Water, with ice, is my favorite drink.

   
   


6. 
   

   Sometimes my head swells up for no reason (just kidding, I was referring to my avatar picture). 

   
   


7. 
   

   I don't know why 6th graders keep asking me if I'm an alien from outer space. Seriously?

   
   

Last year 6th graders participated in a Spring student blogging challenge. The student blogging challenge is back again for this Fall! I have signed us up so that we can participate. This will introduce us to students from different classes. I have put links on the left hand side of this blog, under Related Links, of class blogs that we have either connected with in the past or classes that are part of the Sept student blogging challenge. Let me know if you would like to sign your blog up to participate in the individual challenge as well. The first week challenge can be found here: Student Blogging Challenge Blog.

Welcome to another wonderful school year of Science!

Students here in Chimacum should start blogging soon so stay tuned. 

We found the Mossman! He exists!! Background story: At the end of May, on our 8th grade week-long Odyssey field trip, we were taking our school bus to the Hoh Rain Forest. On the way there I saw what I could only describe as a Mossman. I told our bus driver and on the way back to the camp where we were all staying, Camp David Jr., we kept our eyes fixed on the side of the road where I first spotted the Mossman to no avail (well, those of us not driving did most of the looking). Then today driving to the Sol Duc Hot Springs with my family I see Mossman! I made my wife turn around and stop long enough to snap these shots of Mossman. Now here's the weird thing. The road to Sol Duc is not the same road we took to the Hoh so there are more than one Mossman in the Olympic National Parks!! There must be a whole tribe of Moss people!! At least now I know I wasn't crazy and I really did see Mossman.

 

 

Here's a closeup of Mossman's face:

Why do we dissect frogs? Their organs look a lot like ours. It's just too good to pass up.

 

We also had a squid. It was a great learning experience as we looked to see what structures they have to live in their environment.

 

But this was the most epic, we had rats that were purchased over 15 years ago. 

 

Here's the rat's brain:

I'm looking for some feedback from parents for this school year. What am I doing well? Where could I improve? I'd love to hear from my students' families. Click here to take the survey: http://goo.gl/WpJ1n

This week, May 21 to 25, is our 8th grade week-long trip to Camp David, Jr on gorgeous Lake Crescent, Olympic Odyssey. So I'll be gone all week while my 6th graders learn about simple machines and Newton's Laws of Motion (cool stuff!). I'll also be without Wifi or 3G! That means that I won't be publishing any posts or comments.

Hang in there and I'll work on publishing everything when I get back. If not Friday I'll work on it on Saturday. Have a great week and 6th graders be good, work hard, learn lots, and create some cool ways to sharing what you learned!  

Image from VisualWritingPrompts, John T. Spencer

This movie brought to you by alexg:

Our amazing water quality project has come to an end. Students have been busy the last few weeks sharing presentations of their work with each other, writing final conclusion blogs (#comments4kids), and self-assessing their understandings of the Science standards that most closely fit our project.

Since we are beginning a completely different unit studying physical science students who are not done with any of the above can access any of it from home to finish. Their goal is to have all this work done by March 28 for student-led conferences! Parents don't forget that you can see what we're doing in Science by visiting my HW/Daily work site.

Here is a picture of the Pacific Northwest Peninsula. We find it on a map of WA state by looking for the peninsula that looks like a dragon. The dragon's head is where Port Townsend can be found while just south of there, where the heart of the dragon would be, we find Chimacum and Port Hadlock and Port Ludlow. On this image you can see the two forks of our creek. It's the west fork that passes through our campus so that is the one that we get all our data from.

This image is a zoomed in view of the first image. This one allows a slightly more detailed view of Chimacum Creek, including both the West and East Forks.

1. Do you feel rejected when you don't get an award? 28 responded yes, 44 responded no
2. Do you feel rejected when you don't get chosen for student of the month? 24 responded yes, 47 responded no
3. How do you feel when you get an award and your friends don't? 28 responded Good/Okay, 27 responded Bad
4. How do you feel when you get chosen for student of the month and your friends don't? 29 responded Good/Okay, 23 responded Bad
5. How would you feel if we stopped giving out monthly awards? 28 responded Good/Okay, 35 responded Bad
6. How would you feel if we stopped choosing students of the month? What if students who wanted to compete for student of the month, a mostly academic, good effort, good behavior award, could put their names in so that not everyone had to compete for this? 27 responded Good/Okay, 31 responded Bad
7. How do you feel about having every student's name be included in the lottery? That would mean no more lottery tickets being handed out in classes. 45 responded Good/Okay, 21 responded Bad

• interactive
  plays
  sharing
  demonstrations
  games
  movies
  slideshows
  stuff about bullying
  having assemblies on holidays and special days
  talent shows on our themes
  shout outs
  dances
  playing instruments
  funny stuff
  pranks
  students choosing

Chimacum teachers and Mr. G's Eagle Time students, as well as some other Eagle Times, have been discussing ways to improve our monthly assemblies. One topic of discussion has been awards. We've been looking at what we want from the awards portion of our assemblies and if that part could be done better so that we don't single out students and make the rest feel left out. Think about these questions and please respond to them so that we can see what Chimacum students want for their monthly assemblies (it's completely anonymous).

Click here to take the survey online

Or here are the questions if you would rather respond to these questions by leaving a comment. We've also put a copy of this survey in all the teachers boxes if you need to take the survey using paper.

1. Do you feel rejected when you don't get an award?

2. Do you feel rejected when you don't get chosen for student of the month?

3. How do you feel when you get an award and your friends don't?

4. How do you feel when you get chosen for student of the month and your friends don't?

5. How would you feel if we stopped giving out monthly awards?

6. How would you feel if we stopped choosing students of the month? What if students who wanted to compete for student of the month, a mostly academic, good effort, good behavior award, could put their names in so that not everyone had to compete for this?

7. How do you feel about having every student's name be included in the lottery? That would mean no more lottery tickets being handed out in classes.

8. What would you like to see during assemblies instead of awards? (Like having students share or demonstrate things they are good at for assembly themes instead of getting a certificate and being called up.)

If you or your parents are wondering why we are asking you all these questions here is a blog that Mr. G wrote sharing some reasons why we might want to change how we honor our students here at Chimacum. There are a lot of links and some videos so make sure you scroll all the way down to see the comments different educators wrote. And if you feel like sharing your ideas on this blog feel free to leave a comment on this blog or on Mr. G's blog so that all Chimacum students, teachers, and families can participate. This school belongs to all of us so share this blog so everyone can be heard.

I think the challenge we have before us is this: How do we show appreciation of our students here at Chimacum without making some people feel left out?

Here's a sample of what 8th graders finished learning before winter break. We used compound microscopes and digital microscopes to discover whether all lving things are indeed made of cells. We tried to find evidence that the things we found were living things by seeing if they had all the characteristics of living things that we came up with together.

Sixth graders got to look for benthic macroinvertebrates (underwater bugs) in samples of Chimacum Creek water brought to us by the North Olympic Salmon Coalition. We used a macroinvertebrate water quality scoring system to figure out what the water quality of our creek is like and here's what we got:

An epic battle for survival as an earwig tries to escape a spider's grasp!

 

So who won?

Here's what I found on the Monday after that epic battle:

Last year 8th graders researched the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill to learn how it was damaging the ecosystems in the gulf. We wondered if the world had learned its lesson after so many horrible oil spills and now we hear of another oil spill in the news!!

A cargo ship off the coast of Tauranga, New Zealand has spilled 350 tons of oil! As of today, Oct 13, it's still there leaking!! Read about it here.

Does anyone have any news about it? Any New Zealanders out there who can leave us a comment about this oil spill?

 

1. 
   

   My wife and two kids are awesome!

   
   


2. 
   

   I wear glasses cause they're cool. Yeah, and also because I can't see a thing without them!

   
   


3. 
   

   I love pork, yeah. Oh and chicken too. Steak's pretty good sometimes. Oh and salad, too.

   
   


4. 
   

   Science rules.

   
   


5. 
   

   Water, with ice, is my favorite drink.

   
   


6. 
   

   Sometimes my head swells up for no reason (just kidding, I was referring to my avatar picture). 

   
   


7. 
   

   I don't know why 6th graders keep asking me if I'm an alien from outer space. Seriously?

   
   

Greetings Bloggers!

Chimacum Middle Schoolers from Room 604 are starting to blog again! I say again because my 8th graders got the blogs that they started when they were in 6th grade two years ago! Sixth graders are starting their blogs this year so they will start with the 7 Random Facts assignment to share something about themselves with the world.

We look forward to reading blogs and having people read our blogs and trading well thought out, detailed comments!

Mr. González

This blog post is written by guest blogger and 8th grader Alyssa W:

Space bag is a company. They sell bags that are very unique. They are meant for clothing, blankets, pillows and more. All you do is put your contents In the bag and suck out the air. By doing so it makes more space in your closet!that is why it is called a space bag. They were so kind to help us out with our experiment by donating 5 large bags and 5 med. and 2 small Bags.

Here is a copy of the email I sent to https://www.spacebag.com/12/Default.aspx" target="_blank">https://www.spacebag.com/12/Default.aspx">Space Bags :

Hi my name is Alyssa W,

You might remember me, I was the person that called and asked for a donation of a space bag. we are really grateful of your donation and thank you for that! we promised to write about how great the space bag is on our class blog and today i am doing that!! i would like to tell you how our experiment went. For our project we researched photosynthesis. we wanted to see how long an already grown plant (zinnia, it is a flower) would grow with no oxygen or carbon dioxide!! we thought that your product (space bag) would be the perfect thing to do our experiment in. we grew 6 zinnias by the window in our classroom (they did not get to much sun sense we live in Washington).

after about 2 weeks we put 3 plants in the space bag and kept 3 inside the cups. when we put the plants in the bag, they measured at 7cm, another 7.5, and the last one 8cm. After that i stayed in after school and went with my science teacher to another science teacher in the high school, he said that he had a vacuum cleaner and he would let us suck the air out of the bag, also he had some gas called Argon. Argon is suppose to eliminate oxygen and carbon dioxide left in the bag. we then pumped Argon in the bag until the bag was puffy. we did that and our results were fascinating. we thought that the plants would only last one week. but they actually lasted 2 weeks!!! they survived march 28th- April 8th.

And that is when things started to get weird. When we first placed the flowers in the space bag the flowers were falling down but were not dead. after a little while the plats went flat, then they started to disappear. when i opened the bag on Monday April 11th to see if they grew or not, i was dumbfounded, the plants had seemed to disappear! My teacher and i went through the bag carefully and nothing, we just came to conclusion that the plants had disintegrated into the soil. but as we were about to stop looking, we found a little shard of the plant. it was only 4cm though and we were amazed.

thank you so much for donation and your generosity. we thank you very much!!!

Thanks again Alyssa W

Greetings again. 

Now that you've seen one or both Diversity of Life movies, answer the following questions by leaving a comment on this blog. (Number your answers to make it easier for all of us to understand.)

1. What is diversity of life?


2. Why is diversity of life important?


3. How do we get diversity of life?

Here is a picture of the Pacific Northwest Peninsula. We find it on a map of WA state by looking for the peninsula that looks like a dragon. The dragon's head is where Port Townsend can be found while just south of there, where the heart of the dragon would be, we find Chimacum and Port Hadlock and Port Ludlow. On this image you can see the two forks of our creek. It's the west fork that passes through our campus so that is the one that we get all our data from.

This image is a zoomed in view of the first image. This one allows a slightly more detailed view of Chimacum Creek, including both the West and East Forks.

TEDxYouthday Theme Song from TEDxAmsterdam on Vimeo.

This  graph shows how many fish 8th graders caught during the Winter 2011 season at Chimacum Creek where it runs though our 3-12 campus. Click here to see how we trap fish at Chimacum Creek.

Here is a breakdown of the previous counts. For the time we caught and identified fish these are the different types we caught. You can see what fish we caught the most and the least.

These are just a few more ideas for projects you can do for our

Mini Plant Science Fair

cropped with SnipSnip

https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/csd49.org/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dDhxWWdlUE1FUnlJa0RHRHdrNk1HX2c6MQ#gid=0" target="_blank">https://spreadsheets.google.com/a/csd49.org/viewform?hl=en&formkey=dDhxWWdlUE1FUnlJa0RHRHdrNk1HX2c6MQ#gid=0">Click here for the online planning form.

My 8th graders are checking out photosynthesis as they try to figure out what trees, leaves and plants are made of (meaning what makes up most of a trees matter).

I did a demo recently that didn't work correctly but with the help of a digital scale I hope that students saw that air has mass. I had them look up what our air is made of and then we looked up the atomic weights of all the different gasses that make up our air. That hopefully is helping students answer the question about trees.

So I searched youtube and found this cool photosynthesis song:

I'm surprised no one thought to check out youtube to learn about photosynthesis. I must say there are a bunch of cool photosynthesis raps on youtube made by middle and high school kids.

This Wednesday, January 26, at 7pm in our school library our district's school board will hold its monthly meeting. We have been invited to present at this meeting to explain what we are doing in 6th grade Science. I will be there and am looking for a some 6th grade students to join me to tell our school board and our superintendent what we have been learning and what we are doing in 6th grade Science for our Water Quality Project.

If you are interested please ask your parents if they can bring you on Wednesday to the meeting. We will be first on the agenda and we can leave once our presentation is done. I am planning to share some of the video I took while we were down at the creek collecting data. Please leave me a comment on this post if your parents said yes and will bring you on Wednesday night.

Thank you.

Mr. González

I found this website, The Elements of Life, and wanted to point out a cool part for my 8th grade Life Science students:

"The most common elements in a cell are:

Hydrogen (H) 59%

Oxygen (O) 24%

Carbon (C) 11%

Nitrogen (N) 4%

Others such as phosphorus (P) and sulphur (S) 2% combined

But these are not the only elements that have important roles for living things! Plants and animals need a variety of elements to survive and grow.

Some elements that are important for animals (including people) are calcium (Ca), for bones and muscles, chlorine (Cl) for digesting food, fluorine (F) for tooth enamel and iron (Fe) to help blood carry oxygen around the body."

This is cool info!

Instructions for putting an image on your Blog's Control Panel:

1. First, you need to create an avatar (see my list of avatar websites) or take a picture of yourself or use a picture of yourself. (Only upload a photo of yourself if you have permission to publish your photos online. Ask you parents if you don't remember what they circled on your Informed Consent Agreement.)


2. Use PicGhost or Picnik to resize your image (thumbnail size might work but avatar size is the best).


3. Picnik might be easier than PicGhost so try that one first. If you use PicGhost then go on the next step otherwise go to Step 10.


4. PicGhost  requires that you have an account to download your resized image. If you can't do that, then keep going...


5. Take a screen shot of your image (Shift, Apple - or Command - 4). Your image will be a .png file on your desktop.


6. Use Online-Convert to turn your .png file into a .gif file that will work on your ClassBlogmeister blog.


7. From the Image Converter section choose Convert to GIF from the drop down menu.


8. Click on Browse to choose your image from the desktop (or where ever your file is - documents on PC's most likely).


9. Then click on the Convert File button to start the conversion.


10. Download the new file and upload that .gif file from the Control Panel of your blog!

Eighth graders are continuing to write blogs about what they are doing and learning in our Life Science classes. And now 6th graders have joined them! Sixth graders started by writing 7 random facts about themselves as their first blog assignment. Now they will be working on getting their water pollution brochures copied and pasted onto their blogs to share what they've learned! Please read and comment to give feedback to students by either choosing a title from the Student Entries on the left side of this blog site, or choose a name from a student on the right side of this blog site to read what that person has written. Mr. G

My two 8th grade Life Science classes have been busy blogging. They've written blog posts about the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill and are now blogging about living things (what it means to be alive). Over on the left hand side of this blog, under Student Entries, you'll find many blog posts to read and leave comments! You can click on 50 or All to have more blogs to choose from. Or, if you prefer, click on a student's name on the right side of this blog to read their posts. Only 8th graders have been blogging so far so scroll down to the 8th grade class lists.

Happy reading and commenting! And please leave your link so we can read your blogs and leave you a comment!

Mr. G

Sixth graders are back at school after a wonderful week at Camp Cispus! Each year one of the activities that 6th graders do at Camp Cispus is to visit Mt Saint Helens. We visit Meta Lake and the miner's car, we walk up the 437 steps of Windy Ridge, and we hike down to Spirit Lake. Since I've been taking pictures for years I put together a Mt Saint Helens digital story. Enjoy!

A new school year has begun for us! Welcome back 8th graders! And welcome 6th graders!

This year I have three 6th grade classes with 82 students and two 8th grade classes with 51 students. We have plenty of bloggers to go around.

Feel free to join us and comment on any blogs you read. I will be adding the 6th grade accounts soon. During the week of Sept 13 I will be going with the entire 6th grade class to Camp Cipus in Randle, WA for four days and three nights so I'll probably setup their accounts after that. Eighth graders will most likely have blogs ready for publishing when I return from Cispus. There is absolutely no cell reception and no wifi there so I won't be able to approve blogs. Sorry.

I'm looking forward to a great year of Science!

Mr. González

Student Projects (check out the Google Docs notes students took):

Please leave comments giving feedback to the projects students created. Please leave your first name, a link back to your blog, and please write which period and which team's project you are writing about.

Thank you!

Mr. G

7th and 8th graders, earlier you answered the following questions:  How are volcanoes formed? How do earthquakes and volcanoes shape the Earth? What else besides volcanoes and earthquakes helps shape our Earth? How?

Share some of your responses by leaving a comment to this blog. Remember to use your first name and last initial when leaving me (or anyone) a comment.

Mr. G

Sixth graders, now that you are done with lessons 2, 3, and 4 and reading about batteries answer the following question for your next blog:

How does energy change from one form to another? Give examples of charging a battery and using a battery.

Much is in the news lately about earthquakes because of current activity that has affected people so hard. The Haiti earthquake has brought the world together and now Chile has been devastated by an 8.8 Magnitude quake. The quake also sent a tsunami to Hawaii! Since we're learning about plate tectonics let's read what has happened in Haiti, Chile and Hawaii. Let's put together what we're learning with what is happening and write about it. Begin blogging and sharing some of the many resources out there.

Check out these pictures of the destruction in Chile from the Boston Globe.

Chile quake Interactive (check it out)

New York Times article on Chile's earthquake.

Chile quake shortened our days??

Tsunami travel times graphic. 

Mashable article on how to track tsunamis.

Here's a good NPR article on the Chile earthquake.

Here's a youtube video on the Chile earthquake.

Here's a video taken from the International Space Station (ISS) by Astronaut Soichi.

And here's a picture taken from the ISS by Astronaut Soichi.

USGS Current Worldwide Earthquakes website.



Check out this site that tracks current earthquakes, it's cooler than the USGS site!

Haiti's 7.0M quake wikipedia site.

Photographs of Haiti (You've got to see these!)

Haiti Map

Taiwan had a 6.4M earthquake!

And yet another earthquake makes the news, Turkey gets hit by a 5.9M quake.

Are all these earthquakes connected?

Haiti Earthquake	Chile Earthquake	Taiwan Earthquake	Turkey Earthquake
7.0M at 13Km depth on January 12, 2010	8.8M at 59.4Km depth on February 27, 2010	6.4M at 35Km depth on March 4, 2010	5.9 M at 10Km depth on March 8, 2010
Over 230,000 died.	Over 800 died.	11 injured, none dead.	At least 5 dead.
From a Transform Fault.	From a Subduction Zone.	In between a transform fault and a subduction zone!	Subduction Zone Earthquake

Feel free to comment and tell me what you think.

Mr. G

Click here to make your own newspaper clipping!

Why do I assign homework by having students blog? And what in the world is a glog? If you've asked yourself these questions maybe this blog post will help. I remember just a few years ago how parents and teachers started to worry when our children were using MySpace to create a presence on the Internet. MySpace provided regular, non-techy, people a way to create a very stylized website where they could easily post pictures and keep friends and family updated with what they were up to. Parents and teachers had to monitor Internet use for our children and educate them because there were too many people posting inappropriate content to their MySpace. Since the point of creating a web presence with MySpace was to share it with the world it was very easy for our children to stumble upon this inappropriate material. Schools, driven by fear, tried sometimes successfully, sometimes not, to block MySpace. Parents did too. Things got better though because now students have Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and other safer ways to build their web presence, stay in touch with friends and family. Connecting with family and friends online is highly motivating to our students.

One thing we can see for sure is that social media is ubiquitous. Many people are staying connected through some online service, often through their smart phones, that businesses are making use of these new technologies. And it seems that those who are afraid of these changes are those who didn't grow up with them, those who are baby boomers, the digital dinosaurs; and even some of my generation, the generation X'ers who are digital immigrants. Our children, the net generation or millennials who are digital natives, don't fear it, quite the contrary they live it. Now I don't even begin to know how old a child should be when she or he gets the first cell phone, or the first online account but I do know that blocking access to those things isn't going to help them. My job as a teacher is to show my students appropriate ways to use the current technologies to learn, create and share. Darn, I'm showing them that what they use for recreation can also be used in school. Our job is to help children traverse their online experiences safely and using good common sense to protect themselves. That's what marks the 21st century.

The news media is radically changing as professional reporters aren't the only ones reporting news anymore. So many people are getting their news from other people who blog or tweet or post on Facebook before they tune in to the regular news. And they can do it anywhere! Television, radio and newspapers are no longer the only way for us to find out what is going on in the world. And where ever there is a cell phone, especially with a camera, news will spread even if those around would prefer to keep it secret or quiet. It's a new world.

That is why I hope that I am embracing this new world, this new way of learning, creating and sharing. Reading a newspaper, hearing a news radio show, or watching a TV news report used to be one way. You had to turn to your family, friends and coworkers to discuss what you were reading, listening to, or watching. Now people all over the world can share their thoughts and ideas with each other by leaving comments on blogs, retweeting on Twitter, or making comments on Facebook. I have been listening to what astronauts are doing daily on the International Space Station because I follow them on Twitter! I retweet what I find exciting with those who follow me so there are thousands of people on Earth who can keep track of what's happening up there daily and so easily! My students can do a Science lab, write about it on their blog, and get a comment from other students in New York, Canada or other parts of the world letting them know what they think about our lab!

I personally have learned so much from the incredible educators and administrators I follow on Twitter and gain so much from all the wonderful resources they share with me and all the other educators who are part of what we call our Professional Learning Network (PLN). Fancy phrase and acronym for groups of teachers all over the world sharing resources and ideas with each other. That's how I am learning and I know many of my students learn that way so I am making that part of my classroom routine.

So why blog about what you are learning in Science? Because if you write down on paper or in your notebook and turn in to me, the teacher, then I will read it and either grade it or give feedback or both. Me, just the teacher. If I have students read each other's work and evaluate each other's work then they get another's view and feedback. Nice. But if they blog what they are learning they can get each other's views and feedback, my views and feedback plus the possibility of views and feedback from students all over the world. It's not just about the final grade, it's about the learning.

Okay, you get it now, so what's a glog? Seeing as how so many of my students are visual learners and seeing as how so much of what people create now includes more right brain, artistic types of products I give my students the choice to just write their responses on paper, type it into their blog, or use glog to make a poster-like, media-rich post. Glogs give students the ability to answer my Science prompts and questions by creating an online poster full of pictures, songs, movies and text, which they can still post on their blogs! It's pretty awesome. Here's a response about density blog. Now here is another response to the density question but in glog form.

So in my Science classes students get assigned a few to several Science prompts or questions for homework each trimester to reflect on what they've learned in class, or share what they've learned in class. It allows me, and whoever else reads their work, to see if students are understanding the concepts we are studying in class. Students get the choice of how they want to submit their homework, I've told students they can even text me their responses if they wish! So encourage your children to do their Science homework and if they want, they can blog about anything else they want in between assignments. This is their century to shine so I want them to make their school blogs their own.

Let me know what you think by leaving a comment.

Mr. González

Check my Homework Section to see what we are doing in Science and check my online progress reports to find out exactly what you are missing.

Here's a Wordle of this blog post:

Yes! That one is the denser of the two objects! How did you know? Leave a comment.

(This is an answer to the question on my glog.)

Sorry, that one is not the one that has the greater density. Why do you think it's not this one?

(This is an answer to the question on my glog.)

I had to write today because today is a palindrome! It's 01-02-2010 or 0102 2010! Cool, huh? 

Monday school starts again for us after this wonderful 2-week long winter break. We didn't get any snow but did get quite a bit of rain here in WA state. I will be urging my 6th, 7th, and 8th graders to catch up with their blogging and commenting so we can all get back into the swing of things. I want to thank all of our blog pals who leave us great comments! Thank you!!

Mr. G 

A robot filmed an erupting volcano 4,000 feet under the Pacific Ocean! That's the deepest erupting undersea volcano. Check it out here. We'll be back January 4th! Happy Holidays everyone!!

Let's see who blogs over Winter Break 

Mr. G

I took two of my most recent blogs and turned them into this Wordle! These are cool! Paste anything you've written into the website and it creates a word cloud where the more frequent words in your writing become the most prominent words in the cloud! Click here to create your own.

Hello everyone out there. Just wanted to let you know what my students are working on currently. My 6th graders are finishing some informational, brochure-like blogs on freshwater pollution to show what they learned from this webquest. My 7th and 8th graders are uploading video podcasts on different biomes they studied in class.

Now if you see the same freshwater info or the same biome movie on more than one student's blog that is because they worked in teams of two and three (and on two occassions even four!) so each member of the team got to copy and paste their shared work. So don't give up if the same one shows up two or three times.

Thank you.

Mr. G

Welcome students and teachers from other schools. This year the classes blogging here consist of 6th, 7th and 8th graders. Sixth graders study Environmental Science while 7th and 8th graders study Earth Science. As you read my student's blogs you might be curious to know what some of our topics are this year. Sixth graders are writing about a camping trip they took in September to a camp called Cispus. Click on Cispus to learn more. Seventh and eighth graders are writing about one of two articles they read in preparation to learn about Biomes. If you're interested see what Earth Science topics we'll be studying this year. We are from Washington State in a small, rural town called Chimacum. We look forward to commenting and getting comments from people all over the world so don't hesitate to leave comments on anyone's blog!

Time to start blogging. I'm working on updating your accounts with your chosen passwords so you need to try and login to see if it works. If it doesn't see me to fix your password. On the left side of my class blog you will find your assignments. The first assignment for all my Science students is the 7 Random Facts! Click on it to read what that's all about. After that 6th graders do all assignments that start with 6th and 7th and 8th graders do all the assignments that start with 7-8.

School is almost starting again! So I'm already getting ready so I made last year's classes inactive and typed in the names of my new students. Those of you who were in my class last year and the year before that I still have your old blogs but don't quite know how to move them to your new classes. I'm working on that but worse come to worse, you'll be starting fresh this year.

This year I'm also trying something new. If you're running late and want to get your blogging homework done for those few points check out this webpage with information on how to text me your assignment. You'll get the same credit. All I ask of the texting is the same I ask of the blogging, that you use regular English, good spelling, and full and complete sentences. I'm looking forward to another great year of Science! See you all at the MS Orientation Thursday, Sept 3, at 6:30pm and then I'll see you all on Tuesday, Sept 8!

Mr. G

Hey CMS and all our blog pals, as our school year comes to an end feel free to stay in touch. If you don't want to log in and submit your own blog then just leave a comment to this blog over the summer so whoever checks it out can read what you have to say! I'll still leave all current blog accounts open all summer if you're interested in adding a new blog or reading old comments. But come September if you're not enrolled in any of my classes I will cancel your account. I know, it's so sad, especially for those of you who have had your account for three years! I'll miss reading your blogs!!

Mr. G

Chimacum 6th and 8th graders will finish up their blogging assignments for the year. June 16 is our last day but I will keep all my current student accounts open all summer for those of you who can blog over the summer. Don't know how many, if any, will visit their blogs over the summer but I'll keep them open just in case.

Mr. G

The week of May 18 I will be joining my 8th grade Science students on an Olympic Odyssey field trip to Camp David, Jr. on beautiful Lake Crescent. We will be going on some amazing hikes as we enjoy the lake and nearby mountains and beaches for five days and four nights. What an awesome experience! Our school honors outdoor education and each grade level has a unique outdoor education experience from the 6th grade Camp Cispus week to the 7th grade long boat experience to 8th grade Odyssey.

Check out our featured blogger, Olivia. Her blog has the most pictures to help her explain what she's been learning in Science. Her blogs are complete, excellent and beautiful. Way to go, Olivia!

Check out this year's water quality movie! The water quality websites can be found here.

In order for a buoyant force to be great enough to make an object float, does the object need to be less dense than water? If you think that yes, an object does have to be less dense than water to float, then how does a metal ship float? Explain that. How does a concrete boat float (remember the video we saw.) Please explain your answer by leaving me a comment.

(For those of you not from Chimacum who wish to add an answer or challenge something you read here are some of the resources we used: Density and Buoyancy Links.)

I never mentioned that on Dec 23, 2008 they took my cast off! After three long months I was finally free! The wrist bone is totally fused so I was able to begin using my wrist and thumb again. I have full motion of my thumb back and am still working the wrist to get its full motion back.

And on a totally separate and unrelated note, 8th graders, check the assignments cause I've been adding assignments and few are getting them done :o) And don't forget to check in with our blog pals every now and then to let them know we're still here.

Check out the Teacher Assignments section cause it's time for a new blog assignment. Of course it's going to be about weathering and erosion.

So my wrist is healing, the bones look fused but it's not totally healed yet so I got another cast. After six weeks I gotta wait another four weeks. Ugh.

One team had me upload their biome commerical movie and they wanted it featured here so that all our blog pals can see it. So check this out

1. I love food (Cuban and Korean are my favorite).

2. I love big cats (black panthers are the coolest).

3. I love playing games (playing World of Warcraft at present).

4 . I've been married for over 13 years.

5. I've been to a few Star Trek conventions (yeah, I'm a geek).

6. I graduated college from UCLA (I also have a Masters and my National Board certification).

7. I think fish make boring pets.

Okay, so it's true. I fell on the ponds hike at Camp Cispus. Turns out I broke a little bone in my wrist. I thought I got away with just a few scrapes. Go figure!

Here is what we talked about in class (in case it helps you write your first blog about the lab we did).

Okay, maybe not quite yet but on Sept 2 we will all be back for another wonderful school year! I'll be changing my 7th graders to 8th graders and adding a bunch more students to that list. I'll also have a new group of 6th graders but they may not be ready to start blogging for a while. I'll keep you updated.

Mr. González

Friday, June 13, is our last day of school for the 07-08 school year. I will keep my students accounts open all summer but I don't know who will keep up with their blogs. I will still check as often as I can and approve comments but don't feel bad if you don't get a response until September. I want to thank all the classrooms and all the wonderful students who have left comments on our blogs. You have all been just wonderful. And thanks for Mrs. Markwart's class for working with us. It was great! I will have this year's 7th graders in 8th grade Science next year so their accounts will be open all year next year. Come see us again in September!

Mr. Gonzalez

Here is one container with a bunch of larvae!

Here are the containers with the brussel sprouts and the larvae.

Here's Ms. Berg with a nice young fellow who's been rowing and sailing longboats for four years now. He sang sea shantis for us.

There's Mr. DiPrete checking his oar (or getting his lunch).

The good news is that the DOPA 2006 didn't pass through the Senate! It's gone!! Or is it? The latest news is that people are trying to re-write the act to get it passed into law again. They just won't quit, and people are calling this new act DOPA Jr. Read about it here.

Recently the House of Representatives passed the Deleting Online Predators Act of 2006 or DOPA for short. Once this act becomes a law it would require schools and libraries that receive federal aid to block any website where children can be harmed by online predators. Here's a quote from an online discussion, "The law is so broadly defined that it would limit access to any commercial site that allows users to create a profile and communicate with strangers. This legislation is targeting MySpace, but it would also block numerous other sites, including blogging tools, mailing lists, video and podcast sites, photo sharing sites, and educational sites like NeoPets." Discussion: MySpace and DOPA

In this class we are using Class Blogmeister. I moderate it and wouldn't allow strangers to post on our blog, yet it would have to be blocked under the new DOPA 2006 law. We wouldn't be able to add our knowledge to wiki's even because other people could read it. What are your thoughts on this?

Here's a sample but if you would like to see them all, visit our http://educatoral.com/05-06_picts/Photos.html">2005-06 Picts Site at http://educatoral.com/05-06_picts/Photos.html (click to go there)!

Rocket launching demo on our high school's baseball field.

Tree planting in an effort to restore our neighborhood creek.