Investigations in Science 7 – September 28, 2018

Announcements:

Medieval Times field trip packets went out on Wednesday. It is a green or blue
packet. Please ask your child for the packet if you haven’t seen it yet.

Coming Up:

 Research on Hydroponics
 pH

Dates:

 October 2 - After School Activities Begin

 October 5 - Early Release Day
 October 8 - Open House
 October 18 & 19 - Finance Park Field Trip (1/2 the 7th grade will go one day,
the other ½ will go the next)
 November 6 - No School
 November 7 - Early Release Day
 November 9 - Medieval Times Field Trip
 November 12 - Early Release Day
 November 13 - Early Release Day

What we did this week:

This week we started looking at the parts of a cell, organelles. We drew
both a plant and animal cell. We talked about the function of each organelle and
completed a lot of practice so they would excel at cells.
Thursday and Friday, students competed in our annual Olympic games, called
Organellympics. Teams worked together on different events that represented an
organelle. Points were awarded for winning the game and for being able to identify
the correct organelle the game represents. One event was unscrambling the word
protein to represent the organelle ribosome (makes protein). Another event was
passing the word energy around the team (mitochondria). For event number three
students sorted the different proteins and put them in the correct envelope (Golgi
body and endoplasmic reticulum). Fill ‘er up involved passing around trash (paper)
and putting it in a bag (lysosome and vacuole). It was lot of fun! The last event
was the green pass in which one person from each team handed out a small sheet of
green paper. The organelle represented was chloroplast. The teams also had a
chance at bonus questions. You can ask your child how their team did! ☺
Today, students will take their cell quiz and then work on organelle posters.
Students were challenged with coming up with an analogy for a cell. Some ideas I
mentioned: a school, airport, hotel, phone, etc. They are tasked with creating an
analogy for 5 organelles that fits with their cell analogy. Example: A cell is like a
city. Mitochondria are like power plants because they create energy to power
buildings.