Naples Florida second grade teacher Rachel Miller hits FCAT booklets with a hammer during an FCAT pep rally.

You’re about to take your FCATs; what do you think of them? What do they mean to you, your school, your teachers, your future?  Are they important?  Should we be doing them? Do they measure what you know? Are you prepared?

Practice good argumentation in your response. Be thoughtful and defend your position with sound logic and evidence. Voice your opinion.

By-the-way are you wondering how you did on the sample questions? Grades are in Progress Book, but here is how we did as a whole.

This is just a small sample test so I don’t know how well it will predict your actual FCAT score. If you want a better idea take the 2007 test mentioned in the post below.

Try this — 2007 Science FCAT. This is the actual test from 2007. While this year’s test will not include extended response questions, the content should quite similar.

Now check your answers against these – 2007 Science FCAT Answers.

Let me know how you did.

More FCAT study resourecs can be found on the study resources page.

I found this in an old post to this website from 2007, but you know it’s still a likely topic for FCAT.

 Do you remember these? We use them to determine the F1 and F2 offspring in the FCAT review stations you did. They are called Punnett Squares. Click the image to get a quick overview on inheritance.

Anyway many of you were having some difficulty identifying the step in the rock cycle represented by each stage in your investigation.  The illustration of the rock cycle in the investigation packet should help and also, later in the investigation, you will complete an interactive web activity. Click on the picture below and work through the interactive rock cycle activity now. You should then be able to complete your investigation (here is a copy of the investigation) (Here is a guide to the write-up). If you want to improve your test score from class take the web test again; print it and give it to me in class.

Now enjoy the video!

Remember if you want to see the results of your test (which questions you got right or wrong) include your email address on the test and I’ll send you the results.

FCAT Review Section:

1)      FCAT Reference Sheet

2)      6^th Grade Vocabulary

3)      Practice Workbook Section 1-1, 1-2 completed (in the workbook)

4)      Prep Test 1 completed, turned in and graded

5)      Lab Organizer Worksheet (Homer lab) for some classes

6)      Practice Workbook Section 2-1, 2-2, completed (in the workbook)

7)      Prep Test 2 completed, turned in and graded

8)      A Cell-a-bration Worksheet turned in and graded

9)      Living Things Worksheet turned in and graded

Astronomy Notebook:

12/10-11 Introduction to astronomy. Big Idea and Benchmarks

12/14-15 Scale Model of Solar System EarthComm activity solar distances and diameters

12/17-18 Nebular theory & Big Bang, distances in space: Astronomical Unit, Light Year, Parsec

1/4-8 Planet research (simply a note as to what we were doing, not the project)

1/11-13 Lunar phases description and illustration
             Notes Chapter 22.1 Early Astronomy

1/14/15 Tides EarthComm graphing activities
             Notes Chapters 22.2, 22.3 Earth Sun and Moon, Earth’s Moon

1/27-2/2 Orbits – EarthComm activity
             Compare and Contrast Inner and Outer Planets
             Changes to orbits and their effects
             Notes Chapter 23.4 Minor Members of the Solar System

2/4-10 Structure and processes of the Sun description, illustration, notes from video
             Benchmark review, what learning objectives did you meet, what still needs work
             Notes Chapter 24.3 The Sun, 24.1 The Study of Light, 24.2 Tool for Studying Space

2/11-17 Electromagnetic Radiation and Life Cycle of Stars

Reported by Janelle Jordan
ORLANDO — An Orange County eighth-grader is getting international attention.
Kira Myers, 13, of Windy Ridge School, produced a minute-long video that will be shown to 192 world leaders during the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.

“I really feel like I’m making a difference, because if we can show our world leaders that the generation that’s coming into play cares, maybe they’ll pick up the pace and really do something to help our earth,” Kira told News 13.

Her video is one of just 15 out of 500 entries that will be shown during the conference. Just five of those videos are from the U.S.

Kira’s teachers, understandably, were very proud.

Indeed we are all very proud of Kira and hope that her and others like her will have a positive impact on the future of our world. Take a minute to watch her video.

This is a great way to study. Open up your online textbook or other online resource you are using and copy some of the text to your clipboard. Open Wordle (http://www.wordle.net/), click create, paste your text and hit go. Your word cloud will appear. You can also type in your own text if you wish. The larger the words the more often they were used in the text.Use the editing tools to change the look. Have some fun. Print your Wordle.

Now try to make some sense out of the words. Start with the easier things first like define all the larger words (volcanoes, mountains, plate, boundaries, edges, tectonics, etc). Then pick a few words and determine how are they related? For example how are ocean, plate, and volcanoes related?  What else do you know about them? 

Bring your Wordles into class.