To try to make this class more interesting for students this year, this class has been designed as a multiplayer game. Class time will be divided between battling monsters, completing quests, crafting, earning badges, and finding Easter eggs. Work will be completed individually (Solo), in groups of two students (Dyads), and in groups (Guilds) to which they will be assigned. For one assignment each quarter students will be allowed to work in a pick-up group. For pick-up groups students will select the make up of the groups. They will be encouraged to consider balancing each others strengths and weakness in making up their group.
Science content standards determine what students should know, understand, and be able to do in science by the end of each grade level. The primary focus of the California State Science Content Standards at the 8th grade level is on physical science. Currently we are beginning to study about Motion and Forces. Use the link below to observe the list of standards that 8th grade students should attain through this study.
• 8th Grade Science Content Standards
For each quarter there will assignments and projects that will allow students to apply and share what they have learned. Although some of these may be done in guilds or dyads, research and written reports will need to be completed by each individual student; a group grade will not be given.
Each student will be required to keep a portfolio of work completed throughout each quarter of study. The portfolio will show evidence of a student's achievement and effort over time. Students will be required to complete self-assessment reflections at the end of each unit of study and present their work to a parent or guardian. Through this process students will:
- take more responsibility for their learning as they evaluate, synthesize, and summarize their own work.
- be actively engaged in their learning process
- be required to think about their own thinking through practicing analytical and critical thinking skills
- develop learning goals for the future
In Dr. Beltramo's science class we do a lot of hands-on activities and experiments. For each lab activity each individual student will be expected to construct a Lab Report. The lab report will consist of the follow components:
- Title
- The Problem Statement -
- contains the learning objective.
- Background Information -
- contains vocabulary terms that are of importance as well information that is related to the topic that is already known.
- The Experimental Design Diagram (EDD) which contains -
- the Hypothesis, the Independent Variable (IV) and how it is varied, the number of Repeated Trials, the Dependent Variable (DV), and the Constants (C)
- Results -
- Data Tables, Graphs, and a Summary of the Trends
- Accuracy and Precision - how close was your data to the actual known values?
- Conclusion - what did you learn?
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