A Germy Sort of Day!

We started our Monday with an experiment all about germs! Students explored the question: What surfaces in the school, that we touch every day, would have the most bacteria and fungi? They each made a hypothesis about which four locations would have the most germs. Then, students visited those areas in the school, took samples of the surfaces using a wet Q-tip, and put the sample on homemade petri dishes Ms. DeTerra brought this morning. Each dish had food (a solid gel mixture of beef bouillon, gelatin, and sugar) to grow our germs into larger colonies, since at the microscopic level we have no idea if there are germs are not! Students took careful observations and wrote a detailed lab report. They also practiced lab safety by taking great care to wash their hands, not contaminate samples, label everything appropriately, and dispose of Q-tips afterwards with chemical to kill the germs. Now we wait! It may take the entire week to grow something visible, so we will need to take observations over time. By looking at shape and colour, we should be able to tell whether we have bacteria, mold or fungi.

After recess, we did some math designed to look at probability. Students created a 12×12 grid and played a game using two dice and playing chips. They looked at the strategy for winning the game and tried to determine the probability of getting particular results that lead toward winning. This was an introduction to talking about experimental and theoretical probability, which we will do more activities for tomorrow.

Ms. DeTerra began a read aloud of a new book called End of Days by Eric Walters, which the class enjoyed. She asked everyone to not go to the library and read this one, as that would mean less fun for them during read aloud; however, if anyone is interested in reading other Eric Walters books that are not the sequel, there are many options out there!

We then had physical education and started some fitness measurement through a kilometre club. Students ran 1.2 km outside, and we will chart their results over time. We also charted how many sit ups could be done in a minute. We can also use this data in connection with our main unit and math, looking at our results for the range, median, mode and mean.

The last part of the day was dedicated toward working on the body systems writing project, which is due on Friday.

Reminders:

• Science World Field Trip on October 16th, notice due Friday
• Blog/Social Media Consent Form was sent home today, due ASAP. This is so students can receive a user ID and password to work on this blog as well as other applications like google apps.
• Parent Night Thursday, October 8th, 6:00 – 7:00 PM in the portable. If you can’t make it, please let me know, and I can send you a photocopy of the presentation.

Have a great night!