Sunday, 10/31 BOO!!!

The High and Low mass star presentations were amazing! Students will have time Monday and Wednesday to work on their "Location, Location, Location" projects which will be due on Thursday. I will be out on Friday and students will be viewing a video, but the presentations will resume on Monday, 11/8.

Tuesday, 10/26

Today, we explored our Winogradsky Columns for the first time. We discovered that several of the columns had broken into definite layers in which we found life!

Sunday, 10/24

The High-mass and Low-mass star presentations are due tomorrow and we're looking forward to them! After finishing this project and the last 2 activities, we will be working on the "Location, Location, Location" projects.

We then will be working on Chapter 2 and it is during this chapter that we will be collecting micrometeorites! We will also have a world renowned astrobiologist, Dr. Lynn Rothschild, talking to students in period 1.

We will also be looking for signs of life in our Winogradsky Columns! Stay tuned as I hope to place some of the pictures on the blog!

Wednesday, 10/20 DID YOU SEE JUPITER???? WOW!

Yesterday, we classified stars by brightness (# of suns) and by temperature (in Kelvins) looking for the types of stars that might have planets where life might have evolved. We even plotted Gilese 581 which is a red dwarf star.

Students will now be working in teams of 2-3 presenting skits, animations, comic books, movies or keynotes about high- and low-mass stars. These are due on Monday, 10/25 and are to be placed in their Astrobiology journal.

Monday, 10/18

Today I will only see period 2 and we will look at the Aliens of the Deep video. This video is EXCELLENT and documents one of the possible roles of an Astrobiologist. Tomorrow or Wednesday, we will be classifying stars by temperature and light given off.

Sunday, 10/17 during the Pats game! THEY WON!!!!!

We'll be working with stars and will classify them according to their heat and light looking to see which are more conducive to live. Remember, we're working toward our "Location, Location, Location" project.

Wednesday, 10/13 13 miners rescued so far!

Today, we didn't meet, due to the NECAPS! Next week, we will be looking at our Winogradsky Columns to see if we have life! Remember who your Proscope person was. Be careful not to jostle it as it will disturb any layers that have been setting up.

Have members of group write down any observations (layers, living organisms, etc). Do this in your group's Winogradsky Column section. For the Proscope people, you can export your photos and movies into your section. I've put one in each group's section from last year so you can see what the movies look like! I'll TRY to put it into the blog, too. I tried, but couldn't do it! Does anyone know how?

Monday, October 12

Today, we began the NECAPS so we didn't meet for Astro. When we do, we will be doing an activity on stars from Chapter 2!

Sunday, 10/11 (Ms Bowen's birthday!) :) (and Juliet's!)

Tomorrow we begin the FABULOUS NECAPS!! All students need to bring a personal reading book to read in case they finish early. Testing will continue for Tuesday-Friday and then finish up on Monday.

Wednesday, 10/6

Presently, students are building a model of the solar system (and beyond!) outside. Teams have chosen not only the planets, but Alpha Centauri, Proxima Centauri, Ceres, Pluto and Quoaor, and even the newly discovered exoplanet Gilese 581g! They are calculating the distance and diameter of their object with our sun at 4 cm. They will be writing this in their NoteShare.