A small celebration of a sort is in order. For the first time this year, I have changed one of our bulletin boards. There's a lot going on in the hallway right now so I really had no place to hang these posters, and I really wanted a place to display them, so c'est la vie, our Reservoir Word Wall is gone. Don't tell, but I wasn't using it near as well as I should have, so it probably won't be missed, but the expertise on the planets in our solar system can now be displayed.
There are actually two different projects going on up there. The first is the posters. Each student was assigned a planet to become an expert on. They had to create a poster that they then shared with the class, sharing their knowledge of the planet along with it. The posters on display are not just from our homeroom. All of the classes participated in the activity with their room during rotations, so I have displayed some posters from each of the rotations.
The other project was what I like to call our Human Solar System. The planets are vastly different in size, so with the 27 students in our class, we represented the size of the planets by the number of students that would proportionately represent it. So, Mercury, being the smallest planet is represented by one student, where Jupiter, the largest planet, is being represented by all the students. I even took one of the smaller students and represented the dwarf planet Pluto, because, well, this letter says it all:
As I teach science for the first time in three years, I'm doing a lot of research of my own to make sure I'm able to answer questions they might have. I can now adequately explain why the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has changed Pluto's classification. To be classified as a planet it has to meet three criteria: 1) It has to travel around the sun. 2) It has to have enough to gravity to have pulled itself into a spherical shape. 3) It has to have cleared it's orbital path by either absorbing other things or pushing them out of the way. Number 3 is where Pluto loses it. It is located toward the outside of our solar system, where its orbit passes through what is known as the Kuiper belt, a large group of thousands of other space rocks.
It is because of that, and not necessarily its size, that it lost its classification as a full on planet. There's your fun fact of the day. For now, Pluto maintains its classification as a Dwarf Planet, always striving to achieve his big boy status once again.
Pictured above is the wall of book reports for third term. All in all, I was pleased with them, especially considering I had forgotten to give the assignment the first couple of terms. We will be doing another one fourth term. They have about a month and a half to read a book and prepare a project for presentation. I have the presentations planned for May 6-10. The students can plan on presenting in reverse order from what we did this round. If they presented on Friday this round, they will be Monday on the next, and if they were Monday this round they will be Friday, etc. I'm not making any specifications for types of books. The only thing I am requiring is their project needs to be something different than they did the first time. As you can see, we got a lot of pictures, which is great, but I want them to expand their creativity. If they drew a picture for the first report, they need to find a different project for this round. I hope that makes sense. If there are any questions, please ask.
The official end of the term is Wednesday this coming week. Ancient teaching secret, I've pretty well stopped assigning things for third term. You'll see on the online gradebook, that I've already started putting in math scores for fourth term. There are still a few things to finalize, so third term report cards will be coming home Wednesday, April 10, after spring break.
Three terms down, one to go! Life is crazy, but it's definitely more exciting that way!
"Happy are those who dream dreams and are ready to pay the price to make them come true." ~ Leon J. Suenes
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