Convection Currents

Convection Currents

The lesson on 11-10-14 was on convection currents.  The students talked about convection currents that are all around us and what those look like.  We then continued that conversation into the convection currents that are believed to be inside the Earth and assisting in plate movement.  The students then were engaged in an activity that allowed them to see the movement of substances and how they vary according to the substances temperature.  The students were guided in some of the experiment and then allowed to come up with three of their own variations on water temperatures to test.  Off to the side and below are  the before and after pictures of the experiments.  

10/27/14 & 11/3/14--Ordering Events from Earth's History

 Brain Break?!?!  

The students have been working so hard on a subject that is hard to conceptualize due to its inability to be put in their hands or be seen.  Despite those challenges the students have done a wonderful job understanding the activities and the expanse of the Earth's interior.  Due to their hard work and the fact that we want to continue to welcome our new 6th graders to the group we did a team building activity with the students that had nothing to do with Earth! =)     

The students were given a certain amount of the following: yarn, tape, spaghetti noodles and a marshmallow.  This these items they had to try and build the tallest free standing structure in a given time.  They really enjoyed this activity and the competitiveness came out in them all!

 After our friendly competition we delve into the next IMSA lesson, Earth's History.  Each student was given an event in Earth's History and the goal was for them to put themselves in the correct order.  The snapshots below show them hard at work trying to order themselves from earliest to most recent.  Not only were they timed but they could not talk to one another either.  Our 8th graders really took the lead in organizing everyone.  When they felt ready we checked their order and told them how many were wrong.  They tried a second time to get organized with less time allotted.  We then checked them again and gave them one last shot but this time allowed conversation about it.  All said and done they did very well.  Our 6th and 7th graders offered a lot of insight on their 3rd try and they all worked very well together.

We then finished the Earth's History lesson on Nov. 3rd.  We took the events we worked with last week and looked at the actual historical time it occurred and then scaled it to the length on one year.  We did this using formulas and Google sheets on the kids' Chromebooks.  The students were very surprised to see the correlation of when some of the events occurred in the scaled version of a years time.  

We will now be moving into looking at convection currents, plate tectonics and volcanoes!!!!
Can't wait to see everyone on Monday, Nov. 10th and don't forget the field trip on Wednesday, Nov. 12th!!  It will be a great time as IMSA!

10-20-14

 Our Journey to the Center of the 

Earth...... We 

will see you all again in  ????

 Days...... IMSA 

Fusion students should know!

In IMSA we conducted an experiment to figure out how long it would take each group to walk from the Earth's surface to the center of the Earth.  The students decided to time themselves walking 10 meters.  After each member of the group did that they found the mean for their group.  We then reconvened as an entire group and found the mean of the overall IMSA group.  We then applied that rate to the distance to the center of the Earth!


Finally, we applied the same concepts to a timeline provided from a drilling of a Russian drill hole.  The students found it very interesting that the drill hole took as long as it did.

Next week we will be looking at the History of the Earth and doing a fun team building activity!!! See you there =)

Virtual Journey to the Center of the Earth

This week we continued our adventure to the center of the Earth.  We were trying to give the students a scaled visual of just how deep the center is.  To do this we measured out different colors of crepe paper to represent the 15 layers/points that we researched and discussed last week.  We then took our crepe paper to the hallways and taped them up in order and locations.  This stretched from the band room down past the cafeteria, across the front of the auditorium down the hallway that my room is in and then up and down the art hallway.  The students were extremely surprised at the length as we walked it and taped it up.  This was also a great activity to practice measurement.  The next thing we did was start to investigate the radius of the various layers and use that information to help us find the volume of the Earth and its layers.
Next meeting we will continue to determine the volume of the Earth and then we will start to calculate how long it will take to walk from the crust to the center of the Earth.  See you on Oct. 20th!!!

IMSA Fusion is underway with its' 1st Meeting

 HELLO!!!

We have begun our explorations into the Earth's Interior, Tectonics, Earthquakes and Volcanoes!

We began our first meeting with an introductory activity to welcome our new 6th grade members.  It allowed them to meet and work with some of the 7th and 8th grade members.  It was a great success and they had a great time meeting one another and learning to work as a team to complete the task in the quickest amount of time.  I have attached a few pictures below of this activity.

We then began our Virtual Field Trip into the Earth!  The students were given a picture of a blank cross section of the Earth.  They then had to fill in as many layers of the Earth that they could think of in ten minutes.  We discussed these layers and the number of layers they came up with.  The students then used their chromebooks to research a couple of layers or areas of the Earth and we then shared our findings with the rest of the groups.  This will then lead us into next weeks activity where we will build a visual of these layers with crepe paper and hang it in the hallway.  This way the students can get a better understanding of the layers of Earth and how they compare to one another.

This is just the beginning of a very exciting unit.  Please visit our site frequently to see what we have been up to!!

1st Semester Snack Sign Ups

1st Semester Snack Sign Ups

Sept. 29th-- Sophia Gugliotta

Oct. 6th -- Camellia Schwartzman/Emma Koval

Oct. 20th -- Harley Kent/Lucas Shroyer

Oct. 27th -- Megan Harms/ Alyson Wilt

Nov. 3rd -- Quinn Anderson/Mikayla Lewis

Nov. 10th -- Natalie Nelson/ Makayla Huff

Nov. 17th -- Madi/ Hallie Winship

Nov. 24th -- Vanessa Triplett/Chad Admire

Dec. 1st -- Natalie Courtney/ Marie Fredrickson

Dec. 8th -- Garrett Sprinkle/ Juan Caro

Dec. 15th -- 

Jan. 12th --

There are still a couple of dates, one this semester and one to start next semester that we would like to fill!!! Thanks to the students for signing up and the families for their participation in bringing snacks for the hard working kids in IMSA FUSION!!! We truly appreciate it.  

2014-2015 New Year Meeting, Activity and Deadlines

IMSA FUSION

2014-2015

September 18, 2014 at 7pm 

This is when we had our Beginning the New Year Meeting.  We had a wonderful turnout and was very please to either welcome to IMSA or welcome our returning members back!  Mrs. Blust and Miss Dornon are excited to get IMSA underway this year.  If you were unable to attend the meeting please see one of us to get an application or you can get one from Mrs. Sibbing, our new Dean of Students and IMSA Coordinator!  

Below are a few pictures from the fun activity we had the families participate in.

 Magnetism by Induction was the challenge for the evening.  The groups were to try to create the longest vertical chain of paperclips using their magnets.  The paperclips could not be hooked together!!!  They were all given five minutes to practice and develop a plan and then a one minute competition took place.  The longest chain achieved was 13 paperclips!!  Nice job to everyone who participated!!  We really loved seeing all of the ideas you came up with.

 If anyone would like the powerpoint that we shared at the meeting please contact Miss Dornon and she would be happy to email it to you!!

Below are the deadlines and other important dates as for the application process:

Applications due:   September 25th

Team Review of Applications: September 25th - 27th

Notification of Acceptance:  September 27th

First meeting: September 29th from 3-4:50 pm