UV Chameleon Podcast

This is a podcast of the UV Chameleon bead grant we got through Donor's Choose!  A HUGE Thank you goes out to Loews Miami Beach Hotel for funding us 100%.  We had enough beads to have most of the students in the elementary and middle school classrooms each make their own chameleon.  A few high school students got into the project and you will find chameleons on just about all of the students and adults!  The experiments were a success, too.  Lots of adults found out that their fancy sunglasses did NOT protect their eyes from harmful UV rays.  The middle school science classes realized that many sunscreens do not live up to their claims of protection.  We also tested prescription pill bottles for humans and pets to see if their coloring protected the medicines inside.  They do!  Students were sent home to test out window tinting in their homes and cars.  We have found lots of ways to incorporate science experiments in our everyday lives with the little UV chameleon.  The pony beads were obtained from Carolina Biological Supplies or from Steve Spangler's website.  The rest of the items were from Walmart and the local Pearl's art store.

Pilot Curriculum: Bear International Trust - Bears

10/4/12 - We are part of a group of schools piloting a very interesting curriculum on bears of the world.  Their link http://beartrust.org provides a sign-up form for schools to be included in the study.  The pilot ends in December but we have managed to accomplish 3 of the 8 lessons so far.  As you can tell from the rest of the blog, my students learn science and job skills through a science curriculum that revolves around art glass.  As part of their research on bears, the students had to gather details about all 8 species and then pick one species and write a paragraph indicating why they chose that bear and how they would create it and its habitat in a mosaic stepping stone.  Their next step was to find a photo of their bear and create a glass art "cartoon" or pattern for their stone's design.  You can see the beginning of the project below.

To date, three stones are ready for grouting and the rest are in various stages.  I will post finished photos when we grout all of the stones in about two weeks.

We are working on several other grants.  The Elementary students were given a Pets in the Classroom grant of an aquarium and 3 Glofish.  They are learning about responsibility in caring for the fish and they are using their observation and research skills to learn how to take care of the fish and aquarium.   Both Middle and High school science classes obtained two grants for funding for Bionic hands from Yaeger.  http://science.dadeschools.net/secme/documents/2012-2013/HandCompetition2013Dade.pdf  is the link to the current competition where we hope to compete.  As the students progress with their hands, I will post some photos of their projects.  The Middle school and Elementary students are participating in a Donor's Choose grant of UV beads and made chameleon indicators to hang on their book bags.  The beads change colors in the UV rays in sunlight.  The majority of our students take medications that have adverse effects if the students are out in the sun too long.  The chameleon indicators let them know, visually, that the sun's rays are strong.  Using the chameleons, students conducted experiments to test out their medicine bottles, their pets' medicine bottles, a large variety of sunglasses and several popular brands of sunscreen.  During the experiments, students learned about the scientific processes that go into product testing and about advertising claims.  They were excited about being able to keep their pet chameleons.  

The high school reading class decided that they were going to learn about Latin and Greek root words. In order to make this a bit more exciting, we created a mini-research project to go along with learning the roots.  We posed a contest to create a new frog species for a future update version of the popular game app, Pocket Frogs by NimbleBit.  Students had to play the game and learn about the naming conventions the game developers used to create their bases species.  Then they looked up the meanings of the root words and picked one that they would use to name their frog.  The name had to relate to the root word.  The frog could be any combination of colors in the game.  Designs had to be drawn on a template on a Smart board and converted into photos.  We are in the process of developing a lesson plan to go along with the game. Here is one student's frog submission.

In one of our Community-Based Instruction classes, students used several apps on an iPad to track earthquakes around the world.  Quakes is a great real-time app that will alert the user to quakes happening in real time.  The students used the alerts to chart quakes over 5.0.  They had to learn about longitude and latitude, countries all over the world, locate those specific sites and review the damage that occurred.  Students then had to write a paragraph comparing the damage done in a 5.0 quake and an 8.0 quake, both in property and human damages.

So, yes, we are busy this year with a new schedule and a new challenge to our teachers and students to become more involved with the Nature of Science and scientific processes in general.  I will update these grants and projects in about 2 weeks.