Blog post Week 2
Week 2 Blog
What did I learn this Week?
This week, I learned the components of a living thing. Living things have to acquire a cellular composition, genetics and heredity, homeostasis, growth and change, movement, metabolism, response to stimuli, and reproduction. A virus, although it does reproduce, is not a living thing because it uses a host cell to reproduce and cannot reproduce by itself. To expand on that idea, viruses do not have a metabolism (transferring food to energy), and it doesn't grow in size. We designed a visual in class to show why turtles are living things.
Are you Able to Relate What you Learned to what you Already Knew?
From previous science classes, I knew plants needed CO2, water, nutrient soil, and sunlight to grow. Photosynthesis is the process by which plants use sunlight to make food from CO2 to water. Plants produce glucose, which provides energy for the entire food chain. This week in class, we went more in-depth about photosynthesis. I learned photosynthesis takes place in the middle layer of the leaves called the Mesophyll. In the mesophyll, there is an organelle called a chloroplast, which is a green pigment in which photosynthesis takes place. Chlorophyll in the chloroplasts captures the sunlight, and the plants take in carbon from the air and water from the soil to produce glucose as food for the plant and release oxygen in the air.
- In class, we are currently growing plants where our reactants are water, light energy, and carbon dioxide from our energy sources, light, and glucose
In the future, I plan on teaching my children the proper structure of an argument before we begin using NGSS so my students have a firm foundation on how to keep developing their knowledge when they are conducting an experiment. I plan on teaching my students a proper claim, evidence, and reasoning so they can use their tools to keep developing ideas to come to a consensus. I plan on printing out worksheets for when my students are developing their knowledge about a certain concept so they have an outline to guide them to the proper conclusion. A proper conclusion is their reasoning based on the evidence they concluded from the experiment.
Hi Kylie! Nice blog. I enjoyed your poster of the turtles -very cute. I also had some background knowledge in photosynthesis, but it was nice to have refresher and be able to see how we might teach that concept/idea to elementary schoolers. I agree, that I will use the CER format in my future classroom. Teaching students how to create solid arguments is such an important skill, and I felt like what we learned during lab this week helped me see how I could execute teaching the skills of argumentation. Have a great weekend!
ReplyDeleteHey Kylie,
ReplyDeleteI like that you chose a turtle to represent all the characteristics. I think putting an animal to it makes it more memorable, my group did the same thing. Im in the same boat as you when it comes to relating what we learned, but I liked having a refresher course, especially one that is aimed at young students, as we get a better understanding of how to teach these concepts at that level.