This week, 7/8 STEM students were faced with a hypothetical task from NASA, to organize alien life forms into a table, categorizing the strange new life forms. Students used their creativity, problem solving and brain power to organize the alien cards into a rectangular block with the following characteristics: – Each group (vertical column) must […]
Month: November 2016
Maggots and Meat -Disproving the Spontaneous Generation Hypothesis with Claim, Evidence, Reasoning
As part of our lesson on Claim, Evidence, Reasoning, our 7/8 STEM class discussed the role of one scientist, Francesco Redi, who set out to disprove an incorrect hypothesis. In the late 1600’s, it was not uncommon for scientists and the general public to believe in the idea of spontaneous generation, that flies came from […]
Examining Claim-Evidence-Reasoning
How does the Claim, Evidence, Reasoning [CER] framework affect our work as scientists? Just having evidence isn’t enough… We have to explain (reason) why the evidence supports what we are trying to explain. We’re going to explore Claim-Evidence-Reasoning (CER) as a structure to help us to correctly explain HOW we know WHAT we know. […]
2nd Quarter/Week 1 Assignment
This week, we got to work on creating student videos on issues of climate change. Small groups of students selected from a broad range of research topics. We will continue to work on these videos, from planning to filming through final production over the next few weeks, in addition to other STEM labs and problem-solving […]
Learning about bats from the “Bat Lady”
Our class has recently been learning about bats and White Nose Syndrome, a fungal disease spreading rapidly through bat colonies. For week 8 of 7/8 STEM, we welcomed a special guest speaker, Barbara the “Bat Lady” Ogaard from the nonprofit organization Bats Northwest. She entertained us with a fascinating array of bat trivia, photos and […]
Buckminster Fuller and Geodesic Domes
“Fuller, a philosopher, mathematician, engineer, historian, and poet, is known for popularizing the geodesic dome in architectural projects. One of his ambitions was to do more with less, knowing that eventually a housing crisis might endanger the planet’s growing population. He also noticed problems inherent in conventional construction techniques whereas natural structures seemed to have less trouble adapting to Mother Nature’s various […]
Some examples of our recent experiments with dry ice
Special thanks to Madelyn “Mad Dog” Davidson and Andy Culverwell for the phenomenal videos!