Science

February  At the beginning of this month, we will learn just a little bit about heredity, and how some traits are inherited while others are acquired from experiences. Students should understand that half of inherited traits come from each parent. After this brief unit, we will start out unit on ecosystems. In this unit, we will look at how plants and animals depend on each other and their nonliving environment. We will learn about different types of environments (forests, grasslands, desert, taiga, tundra, saltwater, freshwater, estuary) and about the complex food chains and webs that exist in each. Students should understand how what happens to one part of an ecosystem has an effect on other parts. 

January We are learning about cells and body systems. We started by learning about unicellular organisms, and how they have to complete all life processes inside a single cell. Then we contrasted this with multicellular organisms, who have many cells which can specialize. Now we are working on learning about 6 different specialized systems in our bodies. We will cover the skeletal, muscular, respiratory, circulatory, digestive, and nervous systems. 

December We completed a short unit on matter and changes. We learned about physical and chemical changes, and how even though both change matter, only chemical changes create a new substance. We also learned that matter is conserved during changes and reactions, so the mass that you start with is equal to the mass after the change or reaction. 

November 14  Our weather unit test will be this Friday! Students have a study guide. Here is a link to what the completed study guide should look like. 

November 3  This week, we shifted our focus from weather to climate, which is the average weather conditions of a place, or what the weather is usually like. We learned to tell the difference between weather and climate, and then we learned about some of the factors that affect climate such as latitude, elevation, and oceans. Next week students will complete a project where they compare the climate of Asheville to another city in the USA of their choice. 

October 27  We have been learning so much about the weather! Students have done some daily weather tracking. We have also learned about temperature, air pressure, and wind. This week, we learned about different types of weather fronts and how they affect the weather (cold fronts, warm fronts, and stationary fronts). We put it all together today and practiced reading weather maps to see the current conditions in different parts of the USA and to predict what weather is coming next. Next week we will look at the seasons and learn the similarities and differences between climate and weather. 

October 2  We have just started our weather unit. We started by tracking our weather and learning about the different tools that meteorologists use to find out those measurements. This week, we will focus on temperature and how the Earth heats up, and then we will begin to investigate the water cycle. Students will learn about the different steps of the water cycle, including evaporation, transpiration, condensation, precipitation, and runoff. 

 September 25  We are almost finished with our first unit! Students will take their first science test of the year on Tuesday, Sept. 26. They have a study guide, flash cards, and their science journal that they can study. After the test, we will begin our next unit- weather! We start this unit by connecting to what we already know about weather and learning the types of tools that meteorologists use to study and learn about weather. 

Students investigated the sun's radiation energy by taking temperatures in both the sun and the shade.

Our first unit of the year is heat transfer. We will learn about how heat moves and the different methods of heat transfer (conduction, convection, and radiation.) We will do several investigations with warm and cold water, as well as lots of demonstrations of different forms of heat transfer.