The Incredible Edible Cell!

      These past few days we have worked on our first main project that was part of our curriculum. The assignment was to make a model of a cell, but instead of normal modeling materials, we had to use food items. In addition to using the food as components, the food items also had to somewhat relate to the organelle they represent. For example, the nucleus of our model was an avocado because in addition to having a pit which represented the nucleolus, avocados are good for the brain, and the nucleus is the brain of the cell. This model of the cell was probably done to help us not only memorize the organelles, but help us memorize what each organelle does. When we associate the organelles with common food items, it helps us remember the organelle whenever we think of the food item it stands for. The model also takes away the limitation of the cell being microscopic
       This activity definetly helped me understand cells better, because it gave each of the organelles a distinct look and use when we associated them with food products.  For example, before doing the project I wouldn't be able to tell you what the ER was, what function it had, and what the difference was between smooth and rough. After the project, I know the ER is a flat, layered, almost folded organelle that surrounds the nucleus. It helps transport other substances throughout the cell, working with the golgi body to do so. The rough ER has ribosomes in it, while the smooth ER does not. This same logic can be applied to many more of the organelles we imitated. Our group, although not as perfect as others I've been in, produced a final product that was well done and actually won best in our class. Our highs of the project seemed to be thinking of the materials, and bringing them in. We seemed to be more of a individually smart team, rather than collectively smart, but all in all our final product was great. Our lows of the project seemed to be communicating and working as a group, because there was constantly bickering and arguing between members of the group, mself included. If we had worked more as a team, and maybe pooled our individual knowledge, our end result would have been much better.
       I can say that this project was a lot of fun to do, because it allowed us to be creative and design the model ourselves. Unlike most projectss in 7th and 6th grade, we got to design our own model and think of the materials ourselves. We weren't told what was right, or scolded for what was wrong, instead we had to find out ourselves what would and wouldn't work, and that's what learning is, The added bonus of working in a group allowed for more discussion and ideas, which helped with the added challenge of the materials being food. All in all, this project was pretty normal and fun, but what put it over the top was being able to eat it at the end. :-)

Notation of Thrones Reflection

Notation of Thrones has been a great activity for me and the class as a whole. Not only was it a great learning experience for me, it was also an excellent learning experience for the whole class. If it wasn’t obvious before, this activity was designed to help students refresh their memories on scientific notation. However, the activity was also ingeniously designed to also help students learn other topics that would be important to know not only for school but for life.

Notation of Thrones was a multi-week activity that would pit students against one another in a team-based battle for power. Students were split into groups of three or four and established themselves as a team, or in this case, House. They would design a team name, flag, sigil and saying. Once together as a team, they would compete against each other to claim territory on a map through the power of scientific notation. Before a designated battle day, they would learn about the specific aspect of scientific notation. However, the leaders of each House would design an additional activity to further develop their skills. If two Houses tried to claim the same territory, a battle would ensue where team members from each House would directly compete. The House with the most squares at the end of the competition would win. As I said before, this activity was done to help students learn about scientific notation, or at least refresh their memories on it. However, it also taught students about working in a group and being leaders. To me, this activity was really well planned and executed and really helped me refresh my memory on scientific notation. I remember sitting at the leader table and thinking, “I have no idea about half the stuff on this review sheet.” Now, sitting here writing this reflection I can confidently solve every equation given to me. As well as being a great review, Notation of Thrones has been excellent at teaching me about being a leader and designing activities for other students. I used to take for granted whenever we did a class activity designed by the teacher. But now, having to do one every week for the past three weeks, I understand how hard it is.

I’ve definitely learned some new aspects of scientific notation that I hadn’t thought of before. Like I said before, this was mostly a review for me as a student, but one crucial piece of information that was left out when I first learned about scientific notation was the reason for it. Last year, scientific notation was taught in math class, so there was no need to know the reasoning behind it. This year, however, it was crucial to designing word problems and activities as a leader. I guess this activity also taught me about some personal skills that would be helpful for the future. For example staying focused helped me and my group out when it came to producing the most work. The more work you accomplished, the more land you conquered, and staying focused really helped me get the most work done in the short amount of time we had.

One condition that I met well was the ability to be a leader among leaders. For the first week of being a leader, all the other leaders were just about as overwhelmed as I was. So instead of working together, we split up and scraped up a few weak activities. The next week, I decided to do something ambitious and create a big activity with a theme and interesting graphics to really engage the students. I got the leaders together and, with my idea, created the game with a few minor tweaks. When it was time to execute, it worked pretty well, with a few minor mistakes which we improved next time. I can say that even though there were others, I was one to the main voices who kept the group working and focused. One challenge I faced while working was making sure the activity was fun, worked well, and really reviewed the material for the other students. I found that it was surprisingly difficult to fit those three aspects into one activity. The first week was a good review but wasn’t really engaging the class at all. And although there were a few funny moments, for the most part, it wasn’t fun either. The second week was fun and engaging, and I’d like to think it was a good review. However, it had a few minor flaws in the design of the game that made it somewhat difficult to do. The third week was basically the same as the second week, so the students weren’t as interested. However, the flaws from the week before were corrected. So it was challenging balancing those three attributes when creating the activity. One thing we could have done to further correct these mistakes was poll the students to see what they thought would be a good idea. Although there are a lot of leaders, the people playing the activity are the ones that matter, and seeing their thoughts would have helped. One goal I’d like to set for myself for the future would be to create an activity, but with the help of the students. It would be a good challenge for myself to have to work with students who haven’t had the same experiences as I have, and it would help me create better activities for the future.

Although there were some ups and downs during the whole process, I am proud of my performance at creating activities. It was so gratifying seeing the students have a lot of fun while doing it, as well as seeing them improve at the topic altogether. I can definitely see how desirable, yet hard it is to create a good activity that engages students and teaching them something. I am honored to have the opportunity to help other students who aren’t as lucky as me when it comes to math is great. Well, this is my final blog about Notation of Thrones, and it has been a great experience. It was fun while it lasted. ZestyZach, signing off.

Notation of Thrones Reflection

Notation of Thrones has been a great activity for me and the class as a whole. Not only was it a great learning experience for me, it was also an excellent learning experience for the whole class. If it wasn’t obvious before, this activity was designed to help students refresh their memories on scientific notation. However, the activity was also ingeniously designed to also help students learn other topics that would be important to know not only for school but for life.

Notation of Thrones was a multi-week activity that would pit students against one another in a team-based battle for power. Students were split into groups of three or four and established themselves as a team, or in this case, House. They would design a team name, flag, sigil and saying. Once together as a team, they would compete against each other to claim territory on a map through the power of scientific notation. Before a designated battle day, they would learn about the specific aspect of scientific notation. However, the leaders of each House would design an additional activity to further develop their skills. If two Houses tried to claim the same territory, a battle would ensue where team members from each House would directly compete. The House with the most squares at the end of the competition would win. As I said before, this activity was done to help students learn about scientific notation, or at least refresh their memories on it. However, it also taught students about working in a group and being leaders. To me, this activity was really well planned and executed and really helped me refresh my memory on scientific notation. I remember sitting at the leader table and thinking, “I have no idea about half the stuff on this review sheet.” Now, sitting here writing this reflection I can confidently solve every equation given to me. As well as being a great review, Notation of Thrones has been excellent at teaching me about being a leader and designing activities for other students. I used to take for granted whenever we did a class activity designed by the teacher. But now, having to do one every week for the past three weeks, I understand how hard it is.

I’ve definitely learned some new aspects of scientific notation that I hadn’t thought of before. Like I said before, this was mostly a review for me as a student, but one crucial piece of information that was left out when I first learned about scientific notation was the reason for it. Last year, scientific notation was taught in math class, so there was no need to know the reasoning behind it. This year, however, it was crucial to designing word problems and activities as a leader. I guess this activity also taught me about some personal skills that would be helpful for the future. For example staying focused helped me and my group out when it came to producing the most work. The more work you accomplished, the more land you conquered, and staying focused really helped me get the most work done in the short amount of time we had.

One condition that I met well was the ability to be a leader among leaders. For the first week of being a leader, all the other leaders were just about as overwhelmed as I was. So instead of working together, we split up and scraped up a few weak activities. The next week, I decided to do something ambitious and create a big activity with a theme and interesting graphics to really engage the students. I got the leaders together and, with my idea, created the game with a few minor tweaks. When it was time to execute, it worked pretty well, with a few minor mistakes which we improved next time. I can say that even though there were others, I was one to the main voices who kept the group working and focused. One challenge I faced while working was making sure the activity was fun, worked well, and really reviewed the material for the other students. I found that it was surprisingly difficult to fit those three aspects into one activity. The first week was a good review but wasn’t really engaging the class at all. And although there were a few funny moments, for the most part, it wasn’t fun either. The second week was fun and engaging, and I’d like to think it was a good review. However, it had a few minor flaws in the design of the game that made it somewhat difficult to do. The third week was basically the same as the second week, so the students weren’t as interested. However, the flaws from the week before were corrected. So it was challenging balancing those three attributes when creating the activity. One thing we could have done to further correct these mistakes was poll the students to see what they thought would be a good idea. Although there are a lot of leaders, the people playing the activity are the ones that matter, and seeing their thoughts would have helped. One goal I’d like to set for myself for the future would be to create an activity, but with the help of the students. It would be a good challenge for myself to have to work with students who haven’t had the same experiences as I have, and I think it would help me create better activities for the future.

Although there were some ups and downs during the whole process, I am proud of my performance at creating activities. It was so gratifying seeing the students have a lot of fun while doing it, as well as seeing them improve at the topic altogether. I can definitely see how desirable, yet hard it is to create a good activity that engages students and teaching them something. I am honored to have the opportunity to help other students who aren’t as lucky as me when it comes to math is great. Well, this is my final blog about Notation of Thrones, and it has been a great experience. It was fun while it lasted. ZestyZach, signing off.

Notation of Thrones Week 3

      This is the third and final week of battles for Notation of Thrones. My house, House Nebulous, has definitely improved when it comes to scientific notation, and it has shown on our conquest of the map. We've had a chance to grow our outpost to the same size as our original land, and conquer faster than House Farquad could contain us. A good example of our improvement when it comes to scientific notation is our battle with House Farquad right at the beginning. From last week, they wanted to battle us but didn't have enough time to in the class period. So they battled us this week. We were down a member, so we weren't exactly confident we would win. After losing the first two questions, we thought it was over. But amazingly, we managed to win the last three questions and defend our land.
      The activity that the generals and I designed was mostly just the same activity that we planned last week, but with the most prominent issues corrected. For example, we realized last week that having one person do the work by themselves was too challenging for some. So we decided to have the Houses work together instead. However, we seemed to overcompensate, because then all the Houses got the questions right and we had no clear winner. However, I still think the game was great practice for all the Houses. Not only did the other members of my House improved, but the practice of making and running the game was a great refresher for me and some of the other generals.
      This was the third and final week of battling in Notation of Thrones, and I can say that not only was this a great refresher for scientific notation, but it also taught me some valuable lessons in group/activity planning. Every week I could see the generals improving in working together. The first week, we separated into boys and girls, which wasn't much of a group exercise. The next week, we all worked together, but there was still lots of constructive argument. The final week, we worked fluidly as a group and got the activity done with class time to spare. I hope we get lot more opportunities to work together as a group! Til' next time!
     
     

Notation of Thrones Week 2

        Well, it's week two of our Notation of Thrones adventure and things are looking great for our house! Even though the game has gotten much harder, we've persevered through it. Right at the beginning of conquering, House Farquad decided to take advantage of our weak location at the North and they cut us off. They managed to basically seal us off from the rest of the map, and when we first tried to break through their defenses, they beat us. Then, we managed to finally break through them and open ourselves to more land. Even though we were still cut off, it was a great boost to our morale. We made an alliance with House Pythagoras, and then made a plan to sandwich House Farquad between us! We were ready to strike back.
        Being a general, I got to plan the activity to prepare our soldiers to fight on Wednesday. We decided this time to all work as a group and create a massive activity that would really test the class. We created a theme for it all too, a massive dragon! I think that our activity was very fun and interesting, and definitely worked better than what we did last week. However, since it was a very elaborate plan, there was bound to be a couple mistakes. First, we noticed that the parameters for winning were too difficult for the group. It depended on six people all getting the same problem right with a time constraint, and that proved too challenging for the groups. However, It did teach the class a valuable lesson, always pay attention to the problem itself.
        On Wednesday, armed with the training from before, House Nebulous marched into battle. But we weren't prepared for what happened next. The previous week, we had taken the quiz on conversions, and the House with the highest average score got to place an "outpost" anywhere on the map. We won the outpost. Now, being out in the open, we were prepared for anything. House Farquad seemed quite upset about us escaping them, and immediately tried to trap us again. But with our allies, Pythagoras, approaching from the west and us above and below, Farquad couldn't trap us. However, they managed to get close enough to battle, so they will battle us next class. Well, that's how the game went this week. Till' next week and our battle with Farquad

Notation of Thrones Week 1

This week was our first week of notation of thrones. Notation of thrones is the unique activity we are doing in science to learn about scientific notation. We were divided into six teams and each team must conquer the most land by working on scientific notation. Each team, or House, had a general who would be the leader and help the rest of the House work. I was fortunate enough to be one of the generals, so I'll be telling you about how it is to be a general. We were assigned to create activities to help the rest of the class with learning about scientific notation. Since there were a lot of generals, we decided to split up into groups so we could get more work done. We split up into boys and girls and then began to work. Since I am a boy, I didn't really see much of the girl's side, but I did see the boy's side. We decided to make a Kahoot for the rest of the class to join. One problem that we faced while making the Kahoot was that we couldn't have multiple people working on the Kahoot at the same time. This lead to the rest of the group being distracted while the one person who was working on the Kahoot was focused. This also led to the Kahoot being somewhat unorganized and there were a few mistakes which might have confused the class. I feel like even though it wasn't very organized, it still was very informative and somewhat helped the class, because some of the questions were trick questions, so it at least made them aware of the possibility of a trick question. Next time we could improve the activity by being more organized and making sure the activity is without mistakes. Let's win it House Nebulous!

The Year so Far 9/16/16

The year so far in Mr. Lane's science class has exceeded all expectations. Normally, a new class is just the same as older ones, with a few minor differences in teaching styles and rules. But this science class has been completely different than any other class I've had before! First of all, we all walk into the classroom the first day and there is music playing. What kind of teacher plays music to his/her students. Then we are told that science is more than just memorizing facts, so we will have a lot of hands-on material. And Mr. Lane didn't lie. We haven't touched a book or test since day one. We have done labs and teamwork challenges, and actual engaging activities that really made everyone think. I think it's amazing how Mr. Lane doesn't like to be just a normal teacher but really tries to make sure his students are learning. That's about all I've seen so far. Till next time!