6/7A Adventures through the cirulatory system

Class 6/7A- Write a story describing the journey of a red blood cell through the circulatory system. Use all the major organs in the circulatory system and all four chambers of the heart. Your story must be creative and have personality. Write your name at the end of the story so I know who you are or no credit will be given. Have FUN!


You will be graded based on the following:

1. Content-use of the appropriate vocabulary words as they relate to the circulatory system/heart.

2. Creativity/Personality

3. Spelling

6/7E Adventures through the cirulatory system

Class 6/7E- Write a story describing the journey of a red blood cell through the circulatory system. Use all the major organs in the circulatory system and all four chambers of the heart.  Your story must be creative and have personality. Write your name at the end of the story so I know who you are or no credit will be given. Have FUN!

You will be graded based on the following:
1. Content-use of the appropriate vocabulary words as they relate to the circulatory system/heart.
2. Creativity/Personality
3. Spelling

Blood Typing

Situation: You and your partner are doctors at a hospital emergency room.  Its a busy day and now three more patients arrive and they all need blood tranfusions.

In this game you have to:

a. blood type three patients
b. give them blood transfusions. 

****YOUR PATIENTS MUST REMAIN LIVING IN ORDER TO GET A PASSING GRADE.****


1. Read the introduction to blood typing "Blood Groups, Blood Typing and Blood Transfusions" before you start, otherwise you will put the patients' lives in danger!

****You CANNOT repeat the procedure on each patient.  You only get one chance. You can your partner must work together to make sure the patient remains alive.****

2. Good Luck Doctors! Click here to begin: 
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/landsteiner/  

Your Animal

Write a little bit about your animal. You can write as much as you want but NO LESS than 2 paragraphs.

Blog Post #6: Meet your mysterious relative. Due 1/18/10

1. Read the article. Write a one paragraph (5 sentences) response.

2. Response to at least one of your peers in one paragraph.

Click on the article "Meet your mysterious relative" or read it below. 

Article Link:  http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20091014/Note2.asp

An artist’s interpretation shows how a 4.4-million-year-old female Ardipithecus may have looked. J.H. Matternes 

Meet your mysterious relative.

Her scientific name is Ardipithecus ramidus, and scientists call her Ardi for short. She is ancient — her bones are 4.4 million years old — and is making scientists think about the distant past in a whole new way.

Ardi is an example of an extinct species that may help scientists understand how human beings evolved the way we did. She is a hominid, which means she belongs to the same evolutionary family as people. It’s not clear whether Ardi was a direct ancestor of humans.

Scientists have just published more than a dozen studies on Ardi’s species — and this is just the first wave. Ardi’s skeleton is so surprising that “no one could have imagined it without direct fossil evidence,” says Tim White, an anthropologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied Ardi. (An anthropologist is a scientist who studies human beings and their ancestors.).

Ardi first started to show up in 1992, when scientists found her fossilized teeth in Ethiopia. In 1994, her hand bone was found. For three years after that, scientists worked to remove more of her skeleton, including her arms, hands, pelvis, legs and feet. She was believed to be female because she had a relatively small skull and small canine teeth. Between 1981 and 2004, scientists removed other skeletons of other individuals of the same species from the same area. They also removed fossils of other animals and of plants.

White says Ardipithecus looks different from any living primate, so it’s hard to get an idea of Ardi’s appearance by looking at modern primates such as monkeys or apes. Some scientists have believed that the common ancestor of people and apes resembled a chimpanzee, but Ardi shows that idea may not be true. Ardi’s partial skeleton that scientists have found shows that she could walk upright and easily climb trees and move along branches — traits more easily identified in monkeys or apes. It also shows that Ardi probably couldn’t swing from branch to branch.

“It now seems that the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans was much less chimplike than previously thought,” says Alan Walker, an anthropologist at Pennsylvania State University in University Park.

White and his team think Ardi probably stood almost four feet tall and weighed about 110 pounds. This means Ardi is significantly larger than Lucy, a partial skeleton from a different species that lived on Earth 3.2 million years ago. Lucy was also found in Ethiopia. Even though Lucy and Ardi came from different species, they are probably related. Scientists may be able to use information from Ardi’s discovery to learn more about how Lucy’s species evolved.

Owen Lovejoy, an anthropologist at Kent State University in Ohio, also thinks scientists can learn a lot from Ardi’s teeth. He says small canines — especially in the males of the species — suggest that the males rarely fought. Male apes with large canines often show their teeth when they’re fighting over females.

In Ardi’s teeth, Lovejoy sees the beginning of an evolutionary process that led to human beings. “This is one of the most revealing hominid fossils that I could have imagined,” he says.

Where have all the bees gone?

DUE 1/6/10
YOU WILL BE READING AN ARTICLE ABOUT BEES. PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING TWO QUESTIONS BEFORE YOUR READ THE ARTICLE TO THE BEST OF YOUR ABILITY. WHILE YOU READ THE ARTICLE, ANSWER QUESTIONS 1-5. AFTER YOU READ THE ARTICLE ANSWER QUESTIONS 1-5.  IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU NUMBER YOUR ANSWERS SO I CAN GIVE YOU A GOOD GRADE AND KNOW YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU'VE READ.


Before reading:

1. How do bee colonies function? What does a bee colony look like?

2. Should people be concerned that bees are disappearing? Why or why not?


CLICK HERE FOR THE ARTICLE: WHERE HAVE ALL THE BEES GONE?
http://www.sciencenewsforkids.org/articles/20070613/Feature1.asp

During reading:

1. Describe colony collapse disorder.

2. Why are people concerned about the disappearance of bees?

3. What signs indicate that the bees are sick?

4. Why do scientists believe there might be something repellent in the bee hives?

5. How does genetic diversity affect a bee colony?

After reading:

1. Do you think the bee disappearance is natural, or are people somehow to blame? Could both be true? Explain your reasoning.

2. How do you think people will be affected by the loss of so many bees?

3. What is a parasite? How might a parasite damage a bee's digestion?

4. Why would an entomologist (insect scientist) be interested in colony collapse disorder? What does an entomologist do?

5. If you were going to study colony collapse disorder, what possible causes would you investigate? Why?

Cool videos on Bees-watching is optional

Nature Video
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/episodes/silence-of-the-bees/full-episode/251/

How stuff works? Bees
Check out this very cool video on bees.

Blog Assignment#4: Tulips

Due 12/13 by 10:00am
Read the following article about tulips. Write a one paragraph summary and a one paragraph reaction. Include a question in your one paragraph reaction. Click here for article.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/videos/2006/0610-tulips_tulips_tulips.htm