Tomonori Hayamichi
Washington Middle School
HI

Gravity and Orbits

Wed, Apr 25, 2012 10:24 PM
Gravity and Orbits SciGude Review

This ScieGuide provides me ideas through actual practiced lesson plans, which I could teach the students on the topic of gravity and orbit. This is particularly useful for the teachers who are not familiarized with the content areas on the topic or those who know the contents, but want to have more variation of lesson on the topic. The actual student work samples attached to the lesson plan help me predict what the student work would be like. One of the strength of the lesson packet is that it comes along with the web-based resources, which the student can reach and utilize without any teacher’s assistance so they can continue to work outside the classroom. Particularly, I like the web-based resources using animations, simulations, and video clips, which attract the visual learners more. I was looking for any relevant lessons on “Tracking the Moon” project to relate the moon phase and orbit with other planet orbits around the Sun and integration of math as well. After the students learn how fast the moon orbits the earth in the project, I implemented one lesson, “Orbit” from this SciGuide, as I want to relate the moon’s orbit with other solar planets orbiting velocity and gravitational influence of the courses of planets. It can be a collaboration lesson with math contents as it involves velocity and exponents in scientific notation. As for the suggestion for improvement in this SciGuide, I expect more collection of various types of lesson plans on the topic and look for the integration of science and other core subject lesson to meet the common core standards in the future.

Living in the Weather

Tue, Apr 24, 2012 10:28 PM
Living in the Weather SciGuide Review

All the selected themes are very impressive to me as the points of those focus on how we can get benefited from learning weather and climate. The lessons provided in this SciGuide emphasize on practical knowledge and uses of weather prediction and protection from sever weather, choosing the optimal lifestyle adopting to the specific climatic environment. I have implemented two lessons for the weather and climate chapter in earth science class. The lesson “Which Location Is Best for Me” have the students explore various types of climates and associated environmental condition and make them aware of various lifestyles corresponding to various climatic conditions. This is particularly beneficial for those have lived in only one climate region and not experienced any other lifestyles from the climates. It is a good lesson plan for the students living in Hawaii as many of them have few experiences of various climate changes in the year. I would like to make one suggestion to this lesson plan that it does not include all fifty states information and data, excluding Hawaii. I needed to modify the lesson as to include Hawaii’s climate information to compare any other climate regions. It was very practical lesson plan overall for the students in Hawaii to explore the various climates. This SciGuide emphasizes the importance of study of weather and climate as they impact on human daily life and environment. It covers three major themes of learning weather and climate: predicting the weather, interrelation of weather and climate, and influence of weather and climate.