Early Dismissal

Snows a'comin'. Does not excuse you from science work. You were given a writing assignment, today. The packet, "Building Rocks, From the Ground, Up," explains your prompt and the rubrics.

The assignment is due on Friday.

Early dismissal: 12:45 p.m.

Have a good night.

Dr. PappaZ Is In

My dentistry office has opened! Yep, today, it was like pulling teeth.

Sedimentary rocks were made and displayed, today. Observations were made and comparisons were made to igneous and metamorphic rocks. Little dialog in the groups. They made it seem like a dreary task, rather than a chance to examine first-hand how sedimentary rocks form. Today's theme was making stones -- of course, I popped in a Rolling Stones CD.

Ho hum. BASE ended-up being an SSR time. No one seems interested in archaeology. Too bad. There is a plethera of fascinating stories floating around this old town.

Social Studies was about the freedom of religion. Only problem is, the munchkins were praying for class to end.

A very disappointing day, indeed.

Good night.

In the Kitchen, with -- PappaZ?

Okay, we made the rocks, in class. We kneaded the soil, added water, and pressed the dough into a paper bowl. If they had too much water, the munchkins were instructed to sprinkle some sand, on top, to absorb the excess water.

It was kinda cool to hear kids say things like, sift the sand and knead the dough. If you wonder why we offer Family and Consumer Science (i.e.: Home Ec), there you have the reason. The life lessons taught by Mrs. Beard really do pay-off.

Since today's lesson was rockin', I played some tunes that featured the word rock. Elton John's "Crocodile Rock," and Elvis Presley singing, "Jailhouse Rock." Joan Jett and the Blackhearts', "I Love Rock-n-Roll" was equated to "Hey! That's on Guitar Hero III!!" -- Oiy, I'm gettin' old.

Have a great weekend.

Wow!! We Made Dirt Piles!

Wait a minute. We were supposed to have rocks! We mixed all the ingredients together, added the wet stuff, and set them on the windowsill to dry.

So, why did it come out the way we started?

Hmm. When you make cookies, unless you bake them, you have cookie dough. Perhaps, if we added heat, from friction, from pressure?

AHHHHH, we needed to knead the wet soil into mudpies!?!? We needed to squeeze out the excess water and pore spaces to permit the soil particles to bond and form rock.

So, guess what we will do tomorrow? We get to play with MUD!!!!!!!! By Monday, we will have rock.

Have a great night

Rock On, In Science

Making and examining sandstone. Tomorrow, shale and conglomerate. PappaZ would not answer any questions. My remark was, "Does your mama cook and serve your food? Does she pre-chew it for you, also?"

An Amphibian in an Age of Fishes

Yes, fishes. Fish is plural for a population of fish, but, fishes denotes a variety of populations. Therefore, an age of fishes -- the Devonian Age -- 350 million years ago, when Lycoming County was located about 20-degrees south of the equator and this region was a sub-tropical area receiving the surface runoff from a 40,000-feet high mountain range.

We learned this from a fossil dig conducted on Route 120, near Northbend in Clinton County.

The munchkins used the computer lab and held their hands to the computer screen to see the bony fin of a Hynerpeton Bassetti, was the same size as their hand. WOW!! Kinda makes a musky look tiny.

Better yet! Hyneria lindae -- a 12-feet long aquatic predator. The teeth of this bad boy were recovered and displayed in a photo slideshow presented by the Philadelphia Inquirer in December.

I got all kinds of links to this dig site, including a link to the Keystone Central School District (Lock Haven area), which featured this fossil find in a website the 5th and 6th graders created two years ago.

Go to my website and click on "fossils" in the grey column.

Have a great night folks -- me? Gonna dream about landing that Hyneria lindae in my dad's 10-feet long rowboat.

We Made Limestone

We made limestone, today. Which, led us to talk about how limestone forms in nature. Which led us to reveal our area was ocean floor 360 million years ago, which took us to fossils and from there, we talked about how Carbon-14 dating is used.

Have a great night.

Wouldn't 've come to school, anyway

Remember my fall, the other day. Well, the pain, today, is incredible. To top it off, I had a reaction to the painkiller and spent a portion of the night hugging the great white wishing well. Needless to say, the heaving did little to comfort the torn chest muscle. I just waited for that call to come, this morning. You see, we have a phone tree -- principal calls secretaries, who call a teacher, and that teacher calls another, and another, and so on.
Even Penn College is closed!! Take note of this rare moment, folks.

Limestone Recipe
I found a neat recipe for making limestone. We will do that on Monday.

If You Are Reading This Blog
If you are one of my kiddoes or the parent of one of my kiddoes, send me a comment on how you are spending this Friday off. We will make up for in at Easter. As it stands, we lost both vacation days in February. This afternoon is 'posed to be warmer, but rainy. I can live with that. For now, the ice is out there, and I'm in here, and we are both happy.

Have a great day off!! P.S. Don't forget to read Mr. Fausnaught's blog and Mrs. Wright's blog. Mrs. W. is an 8th grade teacher. You may as well start being nice to her now. She's a great lady and has been a wonderful friend since my days as a substitute teacher, back in the days of the dinosaur.

Conglomerate Rock

Okay, we made conglomerate rock, in class. Funny, we mixed a grey powder in with our sand and rounded gravel. Conglomerate means multiple or many. The multiple came from the grey powder -- it was a mix of lime, silica, iron oxide, etc. But, wait!~!~

Did you say, lime? But, lime comes from limestone and limestone is formed by combining calcium and carbonate. Calcium comes from sea shells.

Therefore, limestone is formed in ocean water!!! But, conglomerate contains lime. Does that mean conglomerate is a sedimentary rock that is formed by sediment from ocean water and land? Does that mean, we find conglomerate rock near ocean water or where ocean water was once present?

Does that support the theory that Williamsport may have been at the bottom of shallow sea?

Hey. This is getting good. Tune in for more on this theory.

Have a good night. Stay off the ice, tomorrow. Believe, it bites -- hard.

Boo Boo Better

The spill I took, yesterday, at school, was attended to, today, at Divine Providence Hospital. Looks like it was a pulled or torn muscle. I should be right as rain in a week or so. Whew!
Even if it looks like rain on Friday, ain't no way I am coming in unless I know for certain school will be in session.

Makin' Sandstone
A bit o' sand and a wee bit o' Epsom salt with water does wonders for making sandstone. Hope our recipe ripens by Monday. We will examine the resulting stone on Monday. Tomorrow, we make shale and conglomerate. On Monday, we make limestone.

Have a great night. Gotta go ice the boo boo.

Ice? Where? OWWWW!! Oh, There!!

Okay, at 6:10 a.m. I pulled into the school parking lot. My wife calls me on the cell -- two hour delay. Great. I got lotsa work to do. One of our maintenance guys was pushing a spreader, tossing loads of ice melt on the sidewalk and driveway of the school. I follow him to the building. I get to the tech shops and SPLAT!!! Down I go. The maintenance guy got the brunt of my heel on the back of his head as my feet flew upwards. I was down. I was hurt. Wind knocked out of me and a terrible pain in my left shoulder joint. The maintenance guy had to help me up, I could not get a footing. What a nice guy. He grabs my arm and leads me to the building.

I get ready for the day. Ran off today's experiment, prepared the powerpoint presentation and gathered all the materials needed for the experiment. I'm ready to go by 8:15 a.m. -- the cell rings, again. It's the wife. "School is closed!?!?!" Arrrgghh.

Fortunately, no ice encounters until I got home. My front sidewalk is angled down toward the street and the ice was thick enough for skating. This was neat. The guy across the street works for Williamsport schools. He was in his front yard with his dog and very amused and entertained watching me bent over using my pen as an ice pick and inching my way uphill to the front gate. Using the gate as a launching pad, I careened ever so gracefully towards the front porch. I suppose it resembled a cross between a duck landing on water and a water buffalo trudging through mud.

The pain in my shoulder is where the chest meets the shoulder joint. It hurts. Something got stretched. I can imagine, tomorrow. That means, I'll have to hold the coffee cup in the right hand. Great. I may have to put the cup down to eat a doughnut. At least I can type.

I deserve a sticker, a pat on the head and a thumbs-up.

Have a great day off, kids. I got some school work to do.

Finishing With Ocean Water

Well, the unit is over. We looked at freshwater, performed experiments, and then took a look at ocean water. I was going to have the kiddoes conduct a project on density and salinity, but, felt writing skills in greater need of honing, so our project was to write an imaginery story about strolling on the ocean floor.

Making Stone
Tomorrow, we return to the FOSS geology unit. Talk about having to rewrite something. The entire 9-week unit was geared more towards 8th grade. I toned it down a bit, explained more where needed and interjected material I felt was more critical to learning than retrace the exploration of the Grand Canyon. All-in-all, the FOSS unit is great, but needed tweeked. For this week's class, the munchkins will use sodium silicate as a cementing agent (matrix) in the formation of sedimentary rock. We will first make sandstone, coal and shale, then move onto limestone. I can't wait until we do geologic time and dinosaurs - grrrooowwwlll!!!

Speaking of Dinosaurs
Well, sort of, this time I'm talking about the tiny sea critters that inhabited our area 360 million years ago. Keystone Central School District (Lock Haven/Renovo area) has a great website on Red Hill http://www.kcsd.k12.pa.us/renovo/dig/ -- about the fossil finds from the Devonian period. Check it out. The kiddoes in that school district did a fantastic job with this lesson.

Report Cards
Get thos report cards signed and returned to homeroom teachers.

Have a great night.

Blue Shift/Red Shift

Okay, we learned that Oog, the caveman, sat on the beach and watched ocean waves. He noticed a stick bobbing in the water. Using his Mickey Mouse watch, Oog timed the number of times he saw the stick at the top of a wave during a one-minute time period. It was 60. The next day, it was 30, the next day it was 120. Hmmm. He discovered frequency, wavelength, and cycle.
Radio
The munchkins learned this same frequency and wave pattern works for radio -- most favor 97.7 radio station. They were shocked to learn the 97.7 means 97,700,000 Mhz or 97.7 million cycles per second.
Light
This same frequency equates to color. White light refracted into the seven-colors of the rainbow show blue is a short wavelength and red is a long wavelength. The wavelength determines if the light is coming toward you or away. With that, we learned objects in space, for the most part are moving away from us. We learned how doppler and sonar work, etc.
Math
Sine wave
Oscilloscope
Monitoring a hospital patients heartbeat, electrical impulses from electrical components.
All that from watching a stick in the water.
Have a great weekend, everybody.

I Made Some Teachers, Happy

I ended the lesson on waves, today, with a final display in the hallway with my train whistle. It certainly annoyed a lot of teachers trying to teach their lessons. Sorry, folks.

Missed the Tournament
Ah, the sixth grade had their volleyball tournament, today, during related arts. The sixth grade teachers had some things to do before our grade-level meeting, and therefore, we missed the entire tournament. Rats. I always like to get photos of the tourney. Who won?

BASE
What will the world be like after humans are gone? Today, we focused on the disintegration of timber and concrete structures after just 40 years. Not the most exciting aspect of human disappearance, but, it does set the stage for what comes next as 2,000 years of human domination is erased.

Have a great night.

Slow Train A'Comin'!

Talkin' 'bout ocean waves, today. Yes, even sound waves. Referred to frequency, wavelength and wave period! Out comes my trusty train whistle and the munchkins are lined-up in the hallway - and there I go, marching up and down the hallway tooting on my train whistle so the kiddoes can understand the doppler effect. I even snuck in a little Fig Newton 3rd Law of Motion by bouncing a ball on the floor and then a tabletop to show wave action as it comes into shore.
The morning classes reenacted the making of a wave in the hallway.

Strollin'
Using PSSA writing rubrics I graded the morning classes essay on taking a walk on the ocean floor. I showed the prompt and a student's paper to Mrs. Pulizzi and Mrs. Nemeth. First thing Mrs. Pulizzi noticed was the prompt was not restated. The afternoon classes get this assignment on Friday. I hope I survive.

Vallamont Park
I am still in shock. I used BASE to show a powerpoint presentation on Vallamont Park. The kids loved it. In fact, they wanted to spend the entire period talking about historical Williamsport. I actually had a ball. I hope I piqued some interest in local history.

Have a great night.

A Couple of Cool Strollin' Stories

Thanks Mackenzie and India. The stories these girls composed for "Strollin' On The Ocean Floor," were FANTASTIC!!!!! My morning classes are composing stories that jive with the PSSA Writing Rubrics. Bailey did a great job, as well. Section 62 and 64 are due, tomorrow. Any late work is worth half-credit -- no exceptions, save for Abby, who was absent when the assignment was given.

Afternoon Classes
Are working on Motions of the Oceans. Today, they realized the up and down motion of waves is simply, water molecules vibrating. Geez, Z, how obvious can this become?

Life After People
Absolutely fantastic two-hour event on the History Channel, last night. The computer graphics were awesome.

Future Fright
My new social studies class watched "Future Fright." A 25-minute story about a family that returns to the U.S. after seven years, abroad, to find the Bill of Rights has been refuted and a totalitarian government in place. It scared some of my cherubs, who, apparently took our freedoms for granted. Boy, is this gonna be a fun marking period with the 27 Constitutional amendments.

TP'ed the Boss' Truck
When you send out a group of gamey middle school teachers on a video scavenger hunt and then offer them a free-style portion, expect, the unexpected. Yep, we went to Mr. Fausnaught's house, found his truck parked there, and videotaped ourselves applying two rolls of toilet paper about the vehicle. To add to the fun, Mr. F's dad and sister-in-law showed up. We got them in our video.

Have a great night. Be careful in the snowfall, tonight. Hope there is no delay, tomorrow. I gotta get some teaching completed.

Strolling revisited

My morning classes are rewriting their fantasy story, "Strolling on the Ocean Floor." I am using the PSSA writing rubric for this lesson. Students received a copy of the rubrics and instruction for the writing. Also, students were required to get my initials on the introductory paragraph before they left school, today. The story is due Wednesday, Jan. 23.
The afternoon classes spent some time learning about how sonar works to determine the depth of the ocean. Then, we went into the hallway to demonstrate how water molecules move up and down, but the energy of that movement creates a wave. Remember when they chased those waves into the ocean, only to be chased back onto shore by the waves?

What a Nice Guy
Our superintendent, Dr. Richard Mextorf, is one in a million. Tomorrow is a clerical day for teachers. He sent us an email advising us about the possible weather hazards and that we should first consider safety in coming into work, as scheduled. He said if the situation appears too hazardous, to wait and come in later, but to put in the prescribed time, or work later into the day. Safety first! How many employers would think of their employees safety? The bosses in this district are top-notch. I really do love working here.

Time Off
The new marking period begins when the munchkins arrive on Tuesday. That means new related arts and the sixth graders rotate social studies. My group moves to Mrs. Pulizzi and I get Mrs. Antonacci's group.

Brrr, Looks Cold
The kids have gone for the day, I am looking outside my classroom window. The snow is pretty, but, boy does it look cold, out there. I notice many children left school wearing thin jackets, complaining how they have to walk home. I remember, as a kid, my parents rarely were able to control my outerwear apparel, because I had to sneak to wear the right clothing to be cool. I see times have changed, but kids haven't.

Have a great night and weekend. I will return to bloggin' on Tuesday.

The Speed of Sound

Sound travels through air at about 1,000 feet per second. Through water, sound travels about 4,500 feet per second. If we want to know the depth of the ocean, we need to send a sound wave pulse down to the ocean floor and time how long it takes to go down and back. What we want is the time it takes to go down. Therefore, munchkins learned; Distance = rate of speed of sound in water times the time it takes to go down. Whew!

One Question Quiz
A luxury on my part. By giving one question, I was able to see some students do not read the question. You see, each student at a table, got a different question to answer. Many of them glanced at their neighbors and copied answers -- oops. Fortunately, very few students did that. Most kiddoes received a 100% on the quiz. GREAT!!!

Shanghai Massetti Got Me
It was picture make-up day. Despite my avoidance of cameras, Miss Massetti, our girls' gym teacher, got me. She even sent a student to escort me to the weight room, where they were taking pictures. Can you believe the photographer asked me to smile!?!?!?!?

Have a great night.

One Question Is The Test

Better work extra hard on the homework questions for tonight. One of them will be your quiz, tomorrow. The three forms of life in the ocean, are: Plankton, Nekton, and Benthos. The three factors that regulate ocean life are: sunlight, temperature, and water pressure. The three major zones of ocean life are: Intertidal, Neritic, and Open-Ocean zones. The open ocean zone is made-up of the bathyal (thermocline) zone, and the abyssal (deep) zone.

A Real Hero
I learned, today, the father of one of my students has been deployed to Iraq. She cried, all morning. I tried to reassure her that his sacrifice in leaving his family is much appreciated and that he is a real hero to go off and defend our way of life. If you know a hero, hug that person and thank him/her for the sacrifices made in the name of the United States of America. Each morning we stand at attention for the playing of the National Anthem and the Pledge of Allegience to the flag. Let's really mean it, tomorrow, kids!

Have a great night.

Ocean Life Zones

Three factors that affect ocean life are: sunlight, temperature and water pressure. Three types of ocean life are: Plankton, Nekton, and Benthos. Three major ocean life zones are: Intertidal, Neritic, and Open-Ocean Zones. The open-ocean zone is divided into two parts: Bathyal and Abyssal. That's it. That is what we are covering today and tomorrow. Pretty easy, eh? Can you guess what the one question quiz will be about? Ok, here's a hint. There will be four different one-question quizzes. That means, each person at a four-person table will have a different question to answer.
Am I good, or what?

Old Photos
The James V. Brown Library website features an online services historical archive of old photos. My BASE students are getting a chance to look at these photos. If I can get myself out of the school before nightfall, I can go around and get some today shots of these same places.

Have a great night.