Volcanoes!

I have really enjoyed teaching science this year. When I changed schools 5 years ago I didn't teach science and only taught 6th grade core (language arts/history). Now that my school switched from year-round to traditional I have a self-contained 6th grade class and get to teach science again. My colleague, Carla, and I have planned many hands on lessons and experiments all year long. We've done at least 2-3 every week. We watched how water flows through diatomaceous earth, created convection currents in water and in this lab even watched magma as it moves through the earth and come close to erupting!

I made 32 bowls of gelatin for the 4 science classes. Each group of four created a "volcano" and injected "magma" into the bottom of it to watch the path of magma through a volcano. Very cool!

One of the amazing things about our science class this year is the fact that Mother Nature seemed to be reading our book right along with us! Sixth grade covers Earth Science. Some topics in our curriculum cover earthquakes, volcanoes, weather and ecology. During our study of earthquakes our Earth shook violently in Haiti and Peru. During our study of volcanoes, Iceland erupted. It is also the 30th anniversary of Mount St. Helens eruption. We were about to begin studying weather when the huge floods and tornadoes hit the Midwest. During our study of ecology, the Gulf oil spill gave ecologists much work to do. The kids kept asking what topic we were going to study next because they wanted to see what next natural disaster was about to occur!

May 4, 2010