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Please check out our students in action, as they continue to explore the world around them, develop and create innovative solutions to problems, think deeply, work collaboratively, and communicate their results in their various laboratory activities.
To celebrate S.T.E.A.M. Festival this week, the 6th graders led activities to show 1st graders how to conduct a scientific investigation. They taught the younger kids how to make a hypothesis, collect data to support their hypothesis, and create graphs on the number of each color in a fruit loops bag.
Week of February 18-21, 2020
Middle School S.T.E.A.M. Festival
This week, our middle school students celebrated their first S.T.E.A.M. Festival - a 3-day event where students participated in cross-curricular collaborative activities, attended mini-workshops presented by guest experts, completed various design challenges and presented the results of their challenge-based projects through an exhibit.
To learn more about our S.T.E.A.M. program initiative at Wesley, please check out our event schedule and the photo albums below:
Week of December 17: Egg Lander Challenge
This week, the 8th graders worked with the 5th graders to complete an Egg Lander Challenge. This is in connection with the 8th graders' lesson on Newton's Laws of Motion and with the 5th graders' lesson on forces.
The challenge required the students:
To design an egg lander with limited resources,
To test their egg landers a few times and ensure that the raw egg survive its landing
To maneuver the egg lander to land on the marked spot (or closest to it).
Week 11: Flame Test of Metals
This week, the 8th graders explored the variety of colors produced when different metals or metallic salts are heated in a flame.
This experiment is in connection to their lesson on the different properties of the elements of the Periodic Table.
The 8th graders got to wear their new laboratory coats (replacing the lab aprons) as part of proper safety gear during chemistry demonstrations.
Oct 24 Cal State LA Field Trip
This week, the 8th graders visited Cal State LA as they celebrate National Chemistry Week.
The 8th graders checked out the university's Hydrogen Research and Fueling Facility, which is the first station in California to be certified to sell fuel to the public.
The 8th graders also visited various laboratories of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department, including their greenhouse and culture facilities, and got to observe various hands-on practical demonstrations.
Week 8: Data Sampling (Fruit Loops Challenge)
This week, the 8th graders predicted the number of each color of fruit rings in a bag.
The students compared the percentage accuracy of their estimates to the actual value of each color of fruit rings in a bag.
It was a great learning experience for the students as they continue to demonstrate their skills in testing predictions in a laboratory setting.
Week 6: Investigating Gas Laws
This week, the 8th graders explored the concept of gas laws.
On the first part of the experiment, the students blew up a balloon to a set diameter, stretched the mouth of the balloon over a plastic bottle and observed how squeezing the plastic bottle affects the volume of the balloon.
On the second part of the experiment, the students investigated how temperature affects the volume of the balloon when they placed a stretched balloon over the mouth of an ovenproof flask, heat the flask and then placing the flask in a bowl of ice water.
Week 4: Design an Ice Cream Packaging
This week, the 8th graders designed and built an ice cream container that can keep an ice cream sandwich frozen for the longest period of time.
This experiment was conducted in connection to their topic on Lesson 3: Thermal Energy Transfer.
Part of the challenges was that the 8th graders were only given a limited budget and material supplies.
Week 3: Freezing Point of Water
This week, the 8th graders demonstrated explored how salt can lower the temperature of water. Using simple kitchen supplies, the students created a milk mixture, placed this mixture in an ice pack and added salt to the ice pack to aid the milk mixture to freeze faster.
This experiment was conducted in connection to their topic in Lesson 2, States of Matter. The students should be able to explain that as the liquid gets colder, it expands and the molecules slow down. The state of matter changes from liquid (milk mixture) to solid (ice cream).
Week 2 : Understanding Matter
This week, the 8th graders completed two experiments for our unit in "Understanding Matter". For the first experiment , the class investigated what happens to the particles of still water when food coloring is added. They were able to explain their observations in terms of particle motion and diffusion.
For the Phase Changes experiment, the 8th graders were able to record their observations on what happens to the temperature as a substance melts and explain what happens to the particles and energy during the change in state of the substance.
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