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Back to School Night 2012
- 1. Physical Science Course Information Mary Enright Physical Science (8th Grade) Cupertino Middle School
- 2. About Mrs. Enright B.S. Chemical Engineering, UC Berkeley MA in Education in Instructional Technology 16 years industrial experience (Measurex ->Honeywell) 10+Years at Cupertino Middle School Family of 4 Mark (involved in the laser industry) Sons, Chris (20 ), Matt (17)
- 3. Mrs. Enright Contact Information By Appointment (Room 3) Phone(408)245-0303 x 203 Edmodo – Direct Message to Mrs. Enright E-Mail Mrsenright@gmail.com Alarid-enright_mary@cusdk8.org Alarid-enright_mary@cusdschools.org Web site: http://tinyurl.com/cms-mrsenright Twitter: @mrsenright
- 4. Physical Science Curriculum Scientific Thinking and the Skills of a Forces and Motion Scientist •Inertia and Momentum •Measurement •Forces and their Combination •Models in Science •Gravitational Force •Metric system •Friction •Designing Experiments •Creating and Analyzing Motion Graphs. •Charting, Graphing and Analyzing Data •Newton’s Laws of Motion •Keeping a Lab Notebook Astronomy •Research and Digital Citizenship Properties of Matter—Chemistry •Celestial Bodies •Stars and their Life Cycle Properties and Phases of Matter •Astronomical Tools (Electromagnetic Density—Buoyancy— Spectrum, Telescopes, Spectroscopy) Periodic Table and Atomic Models Chemical Reactions Acids and Bases Electricity and Magnetism Applications in chemistry Human Growth and Development •Conductivity testing •Sexually Transmitted Diseases •Static electricity and electromagnetic force Applications in Astronomy •Solar magnetic field •Magnetic meteor hunting
- 5. Grading – About 450 points/qtr 1/3 on Scientific Skills and Practice (Labs, Notebook, Researching) 1/3 Practice and Learning (class work and home study) 1/3 Final Demonstrations of Knowledge
- 6. Pinnacle and Edmodo Edmodo will be the place to see current activity Assignments Graded work, turned-in work Calendar Pinnacle will be updated every two weeks, starting September 3. Late Work scoring – Edmodo vs. Pinnacle.
- 7. Back to School Night – Sept 5 What goes on in our classroom Edmodo learning environment Questions on Grades or Curriculum
Editor's Notes
- This is Mary Enright, and thank you for viewing this brief presentation to prepare for Back to School Night. I would like to share a high level view of the course, details of grading, and my contact information with you in this way so that you can view it at your leisure and so that we can spend more time at back to school night on the types activities we have in class and my approach to teaching science.
- First, a bit about my background. I have a chemical engineering degree from Berkeley and I have 16 years of industrial experience prior to my work in education where I enjoyed working as a process control engineer and project and department manager. I’m grateful that my technical experience provided opportunities for me to also work in marketing, finance and strategic planning for a large high-tech corporation. After receiving my credential to teach multiple subjects as well as science and math, I completed Masters Degree in education with a focus on technology to improve instruction, and I continue to explore and expand the tools that we use in our classroom. Besides my professional life, I have two sons that went through middle school in the Cupertino School District.
- There are many ways to contact me, and please use the method that works best for you. This year, I’m hoping to increase my communication with parents using Edmodo. By now your child should have shared your parent code and helped you register as a parent in our classroom. This is optional, but highly encouraged. In Edmodo, you will see all the comments and conversations that I share with your child, and we can share private messages. Please feel free to send a message to me when ever you have questions or concerns about your student. Hopefully with more visibility of his or her world in our class we will all become better connected in a way to improve learning. The class web site has details about our team’s behavior expectations which we sent home at the beginning of school. Please note that this year homework (assignments) will only be posted on Edmodo. If you need any assistance with your parent Edmodo account, please contact me so that I can assist.
- The physical science curriculum has three main knowledge areas: Matter its properties, and changes, Forces and Motion and Astronomy. The skills and practice of a scientist are continually practiced through the year with our hands-on, experiential approach to teaching science. Electricity and Magnetism are tangent topics that are applied in our study of matter and astronomy. Finally we have a unit on human growth and development that focuses on sexually transmitted diseases. I hope you will be able to come to back to school night where I can show you more details of the activities in class.
- Your student’s grade is a combination of an assessment of her scientific skills, the effort that takes place as she practices the skills and concepts, and finally an assessment of how well she achieved her learning targets. Scientific skills are primarily her work on investigations and experiments, the discipline of keeping a lab notebook, and the practice of critical thinking in our work on various research projects. Practice and Learning is a mixture of class exercises, home study and exercises, and formative assessments that I give during the learning process. Please read more about my formative learning process on the class web site on the grading page. Lastly, students will demonstrate their mastery of learning objectives in tests or other projects. These final demonstrations are only done after many intermediate assessments so students are clear about any gaps they have in learning and what we need to do to close those gaps. We work hard so that all students master the learning objectives.
- This year as we use Edmodo, Pinnacle will be a two-week snapshot of a student’s progress. Edmodo will have the most current information about assignments, due dates, and grades. Students are expected to log onto Edmodo every school day to check their notifications. I would recommend you log on once a week or so to see how things are progressing, and possibly increase the frequency as needed. There are free apps for phones, and other internet ready mobile devices to make this very straightforward. It is important to note that the grade in Edmodo does not show any penalty for late work; however when the Edmodo assignments are moved to Pinnacle, I will mark those assignments as Z’s and the penalty will be obvious. We will all need to ensure that late assignments are a thing of the past. If students are having issues with late assignments, parents may want to turn on the assignment notifications in Edmodo so they can assist with time management and organizational issues. I’m looking forward to sharing more about Edmodo at Back to School night.
- Thank you for listening to this overview of our science class. I hope to see you on back to school night where I will show you more about what actually goes on in our classroom. I will also talk in more detail about our Edmodo Community, and I hope I can answer specific questions you might have about the curriculum.