Friday, February 26, 2016

Friday February 26th



Friday February 26th




What are we working on?

This month, students were enrolled in the HIGHLY prestigious (yet as of now unaccredited) Byram College of Sports Medicine, or BCSM!

We spent part of our class periods learning about different parts of the skeletal and muscular systems - like tendons, ligaments, and of course muscle and bone - and other parts putting this knowledge into action and researching different injuries pertaining to these systems to develop a presentation to the rest of their fellow "medical students," (see presentations below).   Students worked in teams of four, with each student assigning themselves a particular job.  Group managers made sure everything ran smoothly, tech experts were in charge of the websites being used to present, research experts were in charge of gathering and sharing research, and presentation coordinators were tasked with making sure everyone in the group knew what to present.

We learned that working in teams can at times be a stressful experience, but very worthwhile as well!

In wrapping up our semester on the skeletal and muscular systems, our future doctors wanted to see some of the things we learned about, so we dissected chicken wings to locate tendons, muscles, joints, cartilage, and all kinds of good stuff!

What's coming up?

After our body systems unit finally comes to a close, we will be investigating matter and how it makes up everything around us!  Some topics covered will include the states of matter, mixtures & solutions, laws of matter, makeup of an atom.

Reminders 

Current Events 
- Current Events (4) are due at the end of the marking period, BUT...  Students are encouraged to follow the recommended due dates listed below so they do not put themselves in stressful position at the end of the marking period!

Recommended Due Date for Current Event 1 - Friday, February 12th
Recommended Due Date for Current Event 2 - Friday, March 4th
Recommended Due Date for Current Event 3 - Friday, March 18th
ALL CURRENT EVENTS DUE - Friday, April 8th

_________________________________________________________________________________

Please check out some of the projects created by students on presentation softwares Prezi and Powtoon:

Torn Rotator Cuff - By Nicole, Matt, Catie, and Emma


Torn Bicep - By Eric, Dominic D, Dominic L, and Brayden


Sprained Ankle - By Brendan, Mason, and Marcus


Torn Rotator Cuff - Hanna, Lola, Tauri, and Cameron














Some of our brilliant medical students did a great job reflecting on how this project went:

Owen:

There is a lot of things that I did in this project. My injury was a torn bicep. I learned that the bicep can tear partially or completely. Another thing I learned that you might still be able to use your shoulder. I also learned that you might not need surgery. Lastly I learned how the bicep snaps. Learning all of this was easy because our team didn’t fight. We all work smoothly with each other. We also didn’t but heads because we all did our job. My job in the group was the research coordinator. Over all this project was really fun. I would love to do a project like this again.

AJ:
My group and I were assigned the torn rotator cuff. My job for my group was tech expert, I made our prezi out of the info my group gave me. MY team worked very well together. We all did our part and the final piece turned out very well. I enjoyed my project  because I made the prezi that turned out pretty well and that at the end of the unit we get to dissect a chicken wing, from a real chicken. I would only change one thing and that would be the websites that we looked at. By some of the ones that I looked out had no helpful info. In all I think my project with my group was fun.

Dominic D:
My job in my group is the director of the slideshow. So, I had to say and write down who stands were when we present and who reads what to the crowd. My assigned injury for our medical school project was torn bicep. I learned that you can tear a bicep by lifting weights that are heavier than you can lift. Also, if you lift some weights to fast, then you can also tear a bicep. I think  our team worked together great. They all did their jobs, worked hard, and led us to victory.

Brionna:
My groups assigned injury was Derrick’s torn ACL. In my group I played the part of the Group Manager. I learned so much about my injury some facts that stuck with me were that you can’t do anything to prevent an ACL to tear. Plus I learned that your ACL is in the back of your knee. One more fact that I learned is that most of the ACL tears happen in basketball because you pivot so much, so you ACL gets tired of it and tears. I think overall my team worked very hard on including everyone, and we did. I think everyone enjoyed our project, I personally liked our project, it was fun to work on. Next time I would want to be a Tech Expert. Overall I liked the project. I can’t wait till we do something like that again.



Catie:
My assignment was a torn rotator cuff. In this project I was the Presentation Coordinator. I learned a lot of stuff doing this project one of them is that you can get a torn rotator cuff by falling or getting hit in the shoulder. It is also caused by overuse of the shoulder or overuse of throwing with the arm. My team work together except for the research expert he kind of fooled around most of the time and our group manager ended up doing most of the research. But by the end we all got it together and had an amazing slide show. If I could do anything different I would add more info on it because I don't think we answered everything we could of answered. I think we could have at least one more paragraph that explains a little bit more. I had fun with this project and I hope I can do something like this again.

Ashley:
My assigned injury was a torn ACL. My job in the injury project was the tech expert. The tech expert makes the prezi or the powtoon. I learned that the ACL related to the skeletal and muscular system because the ACL is a torn ligament in your knee and a ligament connects bone to bone. I also learned that the ACL is called  (anterior cruciate ligament). Last but not least, ACL injuries could happen by when a sudden change of direction or pivot occurs on a locked knee. My team was hard to work with because I was the only girl in the group, but anyways we worked good together. I enjoyed doing this project because we got to research the injury Mr. Morris gave us. Also he gave the groups evenly by giving everyone in the room a number and that was their group. One thing I would do differently next time would be to make a powtoon and work faster on the project so it’s done in time.

Cadence:
My assigned injury was how Albert broke his ulna. The ulna is in your forearm on the opposite side of your thumb.  My job was the presentation coordinator. The presentation coordinator had to make sure the powtoon/prezi was well thought out. I learned more than five things about my injury but I will state three. 1)The ulna is in your forearm on the opposite side of your thumb, 2) You have to get screws and a plaster cast during surgery, and 3) The ulna is parallel to the radius. I enjoyed this project very much! This project was fun to learn about the other bones inside you. For crying out loud, I didn’t even hear the WORD ulna before this project! My team was okay with working together but no-one really listened to each other and were doing stuff on their own. The one thing I would do differently next time is make a prezi instead of a powtoon

Braden:
My assigned injury was the torn ACl and the person we had to do was Derrick Rose, an NBA player who tore his ACL in a game.My job in the group was the presentation coordinator.It was pretty fun because you got to come up with where everyone was going to be and what slide they were going to do.The ACL stands for(anterior cruciate ligament).Our team worked pretty good because everyone took their share in the work and no one slacked and no one complained about what they were going to do or what they are doing.I did enjoy the project.I enjoyed the project because you kind of got to work with your group alone with no help and you got to ether make a powtoon or a prezi.

Cameron:
The torn rotator cuff was a very fun project. Our team was very insync and worked well together. I really wish we can all work together again. I loved the project I also loved being the research expert.I learned a lot of things about the torn rotator cuff but one main thing I learned about it was that it’s when all four of the muscles in your shoulder are torn and I also learned that lauren got the torn rotator cuff. There is nothing I would do differently if I had another chance because I thought we did just perfect.



Jack:
My injury was a dislocated shoulder.  A dislocated shoulder occurs when there is an extreme twist or pull to the arm.  I thought this project was enjoyable because I got to do all the research.  I got to do this research because I was the research expert.  The research expert did the research and then gave that information to the presentation coordinator so they could make the presentation.  I thought our team worked pretty well together in many ways.  Such as not disagreeing, not fighting, and not being selfish.  What I mean by not being selfish is no one took over the project and did it by themselves.  One thing I would do differently would be trying to find more research or interesting facts.

Hannah:
My assigned injury was a Torn Rotator Cuff. I had the job of the Tech Expert. I made the PowToon of The Torn Rotator Cuff. My team worked well together and I think we did a pretty good job. I like working with this team and I hope that I get to work with these people again. I think that next time I would have to proofread the researcher’s work/typing for word errors because last time I forgot the word “and”. I really enjoyed the project

Hanna:
During our BCSM sports injury project my group was assigned a Torn Rotator Cuff. My group members were Lola, who was the presentation coordinator, Tauri, who was the tech expert,  and Cameron, who was the research expert. I was the group manager. I think my team worked very well together. We helped each other when we needed it. I really enjoyed this project although, next time can we do something less gross??















_________________________________________________________________________________


In wrapping up our semester on the skeletal and muscular systems here at BCSM, students were invited to participate in a real-life investigation of our skeletal and muscular systems - dissecting a chicken wing.  Their goal was to locate and identify as many of the following part as possible:

Cartilage, Ligaments, Tendons, Skeletal Muscle, Long Bone, Short Bone, Hinge Joint, Ball-and-Socket Joint, Pivot Joint 


  

Tiffany and Rajanne investigating their chicken wing.  Their group was able to locate cartilage, ligaments, tendons, hinge joints, short bones, and skeletal muscle!  They described the tendons as being "tough and stretchy, connecting bones with muscles"








Brayden, Eric, and Dom L. show awesome teamwork in dissecting their wing.  They located cartilage, which they described as "shiny and smooth," ligaments, and hinge joints.












             Natalie P. and company (right) show responsibility, working carefully with their dissection tools.  They located cartilage, hinge joints, long bones, and (half of) a ball-and-socket joint.



Young scientists hard at work.
















Brendan, Marcus, and Mason discovered cartilage, ligaments, tendons, hinge joints, long bones, and skeletal muscle, which they described: "it feels smooth and squishy."












While half of the students worked as dissectors, the other group members worked as recorders.  These guys compare pictures taken on the class iPads of their sessions











Emma, Matt, Nicole, and Catie are shocked at some of the things they're finding.  This crew identified cartilage, ligaments, tendons, hinge joints, a ball-and-socket joint, and skeletal muscle!













Bryana, Kyla, and AJ investigate the chicken wing while Patrick takes pictures of the action.
















John and Paige dig in while Ryan and Laila record their findings.  This group pointed out a ligament, long bones, tendons that were "long, stretchy, and purple," and a hinge joint that "moves up and down."

Rayan shows off a hinge joint while Devon records












Ryan F and Nicole perform dissection duties 
while Grace and Jason report the findings

























Shane and Marcos work as a team to investigate the chicken wing





















Hunter really showed off his surgeon skills, pulling every piece out that he could.  John helped to keep things under control, while Emily recorded pictures of key pieces













Zach, Dylan, Frank, and Owen did a great job of working together and communicating to identify ligaments, tendons, a ball-and-socket joint, long bones, and skeletal muscle













Nick and Jasmine are focused on finding parts of this chicken's skeletal/muscular system while Aidan focuses on recording pictures of it


Julia, Landon, and Jayme practice safe dissection techniques



Evan and Marin observe while GiGi and Hannah dissect

Lola, Hanna, Tauri, and Cameron were able to locate and identify tendons, a hinge joint, a ball-and-socket joint, and long bones.  They also found a ligament which they described as "looks like a flexible bone!"

__________________________________________________________________________________________________


Spotlight on ID
In Interdisciplinary Class, students just wrapped up a project called 'Genius Hour.'  They were tasked with researching a topic and question of their choice and then creating a project (using whatever format they wanted) to present their findings to the rest of the 5th grade.  Below are some highlights!

Featured Project - Lilly's website on Greek Mythology
site password: abc123














Next up ... Treps!

Parent Letter

http://www.trepsed.com/



































Friday, January 22, 2016


Friday, January 22nd 2016


What are we working on?
In science, students have been learning all about the digestive, circulatory, and respiratory systems.  We spent some time learning about all the organs and processes involved in these three systems.  The digestive system helps our body break down food by pulling nutrients out in the small intestine and getting rid of waste.  The circulatory system pumps blood through a series of blood vessels to get essential oxygen and nutrients to our body.  The respiratory system uses a series of organs to exchange oxygen and carbon dioxide with the environment.  As the students found out, these systems - along with others - work together to allow you to be ... you!  

What's coming up?  
Over the next couple of weeks, we will be wrapping up our unit on body systems with a test on the digestive, circulatory, and respiratory systems, followed by an overview of the skeletal and muscular system and an investigation into the physical makeup of a chicken wing.  Students will be able to 'dissect' a wing, and track how many body parts we've learned about they can find!

Reminders 
- 3 Current Events are due for all students by Tuesday, January 26th!  (4 more will be due in the third marking period)
- A day students (Atoms Family and Time Travelers) will have a test on the body systems on Monday, February 2nd
- B day students (Beaker Bunch and Little Einsteins) will have a test on the body systems on Friday, January 29th
_________________________________________________________________


Students working hard in class, diving into body systems!
In order to gain a better understanding of how these body systems work, we spent the last few weeks working through stations based on each of them.  Some brave student bloggers volunteered to share some of the cool things we've been up to lately...


Some 5th graders testing out what peristalsis does to food in our stomach!
Catie says:
Dear Parents & Guardians,
I would like to tell you about one of the stations I did in science class. I was doing stations and my favorite station was station 3. Station 3 was a hands on project where we learned on how our digestive system works. What we had to do was we had to partner up and and take vinegar and a funnel, we had to pour the vinegar into 2 bags. Then put 2 crackers in the bags. We also had a timer and every 5, 10, 15 minutes we had to squeeze only one of the bags. But had to leave the other bag alone. Us squeezing the one bag was like our muscles in our stomachs that digest the food. We got to see what worked better and had to compare. I like hands on stations like this because it gets messy and when we poured the vinegar in the bags it got on the floors and tables. What also makes this station awesome is that I got to do it with my best friend. Mr. Morris is the craziest teacher ever. But he makes the stations fun too. That is why station 3 is the craziest and most fun station ever to me.

Tauri says:
It was a fun station because it was an real science experiment. I was a fun experiment because we put two crackers in a bag with vinegar and we switch bag number 1 and we left bag number 2 alone. We switch it every 4 minutes and we learn that if you switch it’s better for use to digest it and that is we digest our food.

Jack says:
During station 3 (Hands-on Digestion) we had to take two crackers, two bags, and fill both bags with vinegar to represent your stomach acid.  The two crackers represented your food getting broken down by the stomach acid (vinegar).  One bag we just used vinegar to break the cracker down.  Bag 2 we used peristalsis but bag 1 we did not have to use peristalsis.  Peristalsis is a wavelike contraction of muscles in the organs of the digestive system.  To represent peristalsis we just squeezed the bag every 4 minutes.  We had to record our data in a table every 4 minutes we squeezed bag 2, and we also had to record the data from bag 1 every four minutes.  This experiment represented how our stomach worked.  At the end of the experiment we discovered that peristalsis broke down the cracker better than no peristalsis.
Nicole says:
We have been learning about  the body systems for a couple of weeks now, and my favorite was station 3. In station 3 we learned about how muscular action breaks down the food in your stomach. How we did it was, we filled two plastic bags with 60 millileters of vinegar and put one cracker in each bag. We then labeled one bag ¨No muscular action¨ than we labeled the other bag ¨Muscular action.¨ After that we waited four minutes, then squeezed the bag that said ¨Muscular action¨ six times. We logged our data and we waited four more minutes then squeezed the bag six more times. After that we did the process one more time. Mr. Morris is a crazy teacher but he always finds a way to make things more fun in the classroom.

Erica is measuring out the vinegar that represented our stomach acid!
Natalie P. and Erica say:
At this station we learned how our muscles action affect the food. We took 2 bags and put a cracker in each bag and poured vinegar. The vinegar represented the stomach acid. Our assignment was to squeeze the second bag to represent Muscle Action and the first bag was to represent ¨No Muscle Action.¨ After every 4 minutes we squeezed the second bag and then recorded what the bags looked like. After 12 minutes we did our last observation. We learned what happens in your stomach. The ¨Muscle Action¨ bag represented the peristaltic movement in your stomach. We also learned that if we didn’t have muscles to grind it up it would be so much harder to live. We both thought the station was definitely gross but really fun! This station was definitely our favorite! We wish we could do it again! _____________________________________________________________

Rachel, Lilly, and Tiffany say:
Our favorite station out of all the six stations was how long is my digestive system (station 4). In this station we used different colored yarn as a substitute for parts of our digestive system, (since we can't use our own!!) It surprised us,  our small intestine was four times bigger than us!  The red yarn was a substitute for our mouth,  The yellow yarn substituted for our esophagus.  The white yarn stood for our stomach, (that was surprisingly small!) Blue yarn stood for the small intestine, (quick fact: the small intestine is larger than the large intestine but the small intestine is thinner than the large intestine.) And last the purple stood for the large intestine. Now for the last step, we measured all of our organs and the total was 402 centimeters!  Overall this station was educational but fun at the same time, and we hope to do more stuff like this!!!

Paige B. says:
I had fun doing this station because I like measuring, and it was a great idea of making a station of how long is your digestive system is. Who wouldn't like to find out that, it was pretty interesting. I learned how long my digestive system was - it was very long. I thought it was very cool and I had fun on this station!!!! I will tell you some of the body parts that we measured to get  how long my digestive system First, the mouth was 22 centimeters, my Esophagus was 16 centimeters, and my stomach was 7 centimeters.  My Small intestine was 998 centimeters and then my large intestine was 158.  Then we got a calculator and added all of the centimeters and I got 1,201.

Hanna says:
One of the stations we did was we used yarn to measure how long our digestive system was. Mr. Morris gave us a google doc and we had to measure from different parts of our body to see how long that part was such as, mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. Then, we had to measure all the different colors of yarn in centimeters and add them up. My small intestine was 4 times the size of me for a total of 600 cm alone! My entire digestive system was 809 cm. This station was my favorite because we got to make something, bring it home and see how long my entire digestive system is. How does it all fit in there?  




Hanna measures her digestive system (it goes all the way down the hall!)...  

... while  Dylan begins to plan his out





















_________________________________________________________________________________

Emma says:
We have been doing stations in Mr. Morris’s science class.  We did stations on cells and now we are doing them on systems like the Digestive,  Respiratory, and Circulatory systems.  I had fun at all the stations but my favorite station was Exercise and Heart rate.  What I did was sat down and took my pulse for fifteen seconds.  Then I had to put it on a data sheet.  Then I had to do jumping jacks and check my pulse and record my data.  Then I had to sit for five minutes rest. I liked that station a lot. My data was before I started everything was 40. After 15 jumping jacks it was 80 BPM.  After 25 jumping jacks it was 128 BPM and after 5 minutes rest  it was 40 BPM.  Exercise makes your heart go faster.

Catherine says:
In Station  5 (How does exercise affect your heart rate?) we learned that if you do more jumping jacks your pulse will raise its speed. That means that your heart rate goes faster and faster. I enjoyed this station because of using a stopwatch and a timer. We had to  take our pulse for 15 seconds and then do 15 jumping jacks. Then, we recorded the number and timed it by 4 to find our BPM, or beats per minute. Next, we did the same thing but did 25 jumping jacks instead.  Our heart beats faster to pump more oxygen into our blood and to our muscles when they work hard. This was a super fun station!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Catherine's pie chart showing how exercise affected her heart rate  






















_________________________________________________________________________

Braden C. says:
I liked station two, Super Organ, because that we got to create our own super hero out of an organ. My super hero was the small intestine. His power was to eat food and digest it and then spit it out at the villains. I think that everyone else liked station two too because it was very creative.  The small intestine kind of works like a big tube that is all scrunched up and it pushes the food down it all the way until it stops.While it does that it squishes the food in it.The small intestine is the part of the gastrointestinal tract between the stomach and the large intestine.The small intestine can bleed. which can be very dangerous.



_________________________________________________________________________________

If students completed all of the stations early, one of their challenges included making a slide show about a body system we had not learned about in class.  Carly, Gabbie, and Lola found out some great information on the nervous system: 
The Nervous System by Gabbie, Lola, and Carly

_________________________________________________________________________________

Wrap-up

In addition to the stations written about, the students also practiced finding information using informational texts and videos to compare the functions of our body systems.