Mrs Phillips Grade 6 Science - Latest Blog Entries

Seeing Science

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 09:27:00 -0500

Saturday was a great day!!! It started out 82 degrees and gorgeous. And with little to no warning, like it was right on cue and had been sitting in last week's classes, a cold front rolled in. It was a textbook cold front with the right kind of clouds, (Do you remember?) a 25 degree drop in temperature, a downpour of precipitation, and even a little thunder and lightning. As I was thinkning about how I'd love to call each and every student, one of them called me, just to tell me they noticed!!! You can't believe how excited I was. Seeing science is really believeing. We all see it every day. Step back and look around and find some science right now. Are you surprised? Do you take it for granted? What can you learn from it? Take some time to make sense of what you've learned at school, because that's when you're really learning.

Is bad weather better than no weather?

Sat, 29 Mar 2008 08:55:00 -0500

So, we have spent a little bit of time looking at our atmosphere and now how the sun's radiation "jump starts" our weather. The sun is a great friend to the earth. It keeps us warm and gives us light. It is also why we get to experience changes in weather. Look outside right now and imagine today, everyday with no changes in weather. Or, what about no weather at all. What would your day look like or feel like. (Don't forget to think about temperature, pressure, humidity, precipitation, wind.....) While we are complaining about this cold spring we are having we might want to consider something worse, and that would be no weather. What would that be like and what could that mean for living things?

It's Time to Change Gears

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 08:27:00 -0500

Sorry that it has taken so long to write this next blog, but we've been busy in the computer lab doing those power points. You all did a great job. You can do so much more than what we had time for. Don't be afraid to play with it.

So as we leave astronomy behing we're going start exploring meteorology. This week we will be looking at our atmosphere. It is very different from the rest our solar system's planets. We have talked a little about air pressure and some gasses found on other planets and now we'll get a chance to really explore those things in depth. Our atmosphere holds our weather and we need to understand it before we can start trying to predict what is going to happen there. I am sure you will find this topic very interesting.

I Know You're Out There!!

Wed, 20 Feb 2008 07:10:00 -0600

ANY NEW COMMENTS OR BLOGS TO ME, REPLY HERE!!! I know you are checking this site, even on break. AWESOME!!! I wanted to remind you that if its not too cloudy there is LUNAR ECLIPSE TONIGHT starting at about 10:00 and lasting 50 minutes from beginning to end. Now here is a reason to stay up late on a Wednesday. There is some quick info. on it on weather.com. Happy Viewing!

Answering a question with a question.

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 06:45:00 -0600

We had a good week learning some cool things about the terrestial planets. I am really amazed by all of your questions here and in class. Your minds are really working. There have been lots of "what if" questions......

"What if Venus were to explode?"

"What if we did make it to the black hole?"

"What if there were a supernova in our galaxy?

Great Job! These kind of questions come from GREAT SCIENTISTS!! Remember the next step in the scientific method is to make a hypothesis. So I keep on asking those questions, but be prepared..... I will be asking you,

"What do you think?".

Let's answer some questions

Fri, 01 Feb 2008 07:54:00 -0600

I thought I'd answer some questions that we haven't got to in class. I have to say though, if you are on line then you have all the answers at your fingertips. What I'd love most is for you to go on a little hunt and share them with me. The few sites I have listed are a place to start. Remember that the star closest to us after the sun would take us 70,000 years to get to.... I know Dylan, how do they know that and how do we study things so far away. People have been studying the stars for hundreds of years and using some pretty simple techniques have found distances of planets and stars that we still believe are accurate today. You can look up "parallax" and see what that has to do with it. Also, look into the Hubble Telescope. It has the ability to take some very powerful pictures of other galaxies that are light years away.

As for stars, they almost have a life in that they are "born" and eventually burn out or explode. The same is true of our star, the sun. I believe there is a section on stars in our book.

We will be doing a project Cody. We'll get there. Expect to get to the computer lab this week or next as part of it.

Some Little Specks Working Hard at ASTRONOMY

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 17:42:00 -0600

Great job for those of you who looked into and thought about galaxies and solar systems. I hope you all realize how small each of us really are. Most important is that no matter how small we are, each one of us has a huge impact on the world and people around us. As our earth rotates and days and nights go by, I have gotten to see all of you learn some pretty neat things. You all also teach me every day too. If it wasn't for your questions in class and here, I may not have spent some of my time thinking about lots of things, from black holes to what would be a better way of keeping students' folders organized. You are all great. Thanks for teaching me and making me want to learn more. Now, for a little challenge.... Blog me back after you find out about how our planet's revolution around the sun has anything to do with leap years????

Thanks For Blogging!!

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 12:37:00 -0600

If your are reading this WOo-HOo!! You paid attention today and have made it to my website. You have no idea how excited I am!! Hopefully we can all use blogging to get to know each other and get some real learning done. Try to blog me back. Bonus if you can teach me something about how a solar system and galaxy are the same.... or are they different???? Have Fun!

All Those Tests

Sat, 19 Jan 2008 10:57:00 -0600

What a crazy couple of weeks we're in the middle of right now. The NYS ELA exams and midterms back-to-back have set such a different climate in our school. Our schedule and routine have been anything but predictable and we haven't really uncovered any new science knowledge since before Christmas. I can't wait to get back to work. Even though we are all restless, yes me too, all those tests are important. I promise that the second semester will be as exciting and as interesting as you make it. By the way, we are going to start exploring astromomy, my favorite. When you have a little free time start looking for something you can teach me. Maybe you can find out why Pluto is no longer considered a planet. What happened to it???? I can't wait to hear what you've found.

Who are you??

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 09:46:00 -0600

I hope all of my students are enjoying this year in Science. I know this is the first time that a specific time in your day is set aside for Science. When I started this year, I was really looking forward to meeting all of you to find out what this "group" of students was like. I have now learned a lot about some of you, which makes me really happy. But, I still know very little about others. So I challenge any of you who are reading this to come to me tomorrow and tell me something surprising about you that I may not know. I'll do the same for you.. a little something about me is that in first grade I participated in our school talent show by doing some karate. Both my father and brother are blackbelts and run their own school, and I take lessons in Gowanda.