Physical Science Study Guide Answers

Answers to Physical Science Study Guide

1. The nucleus has a positive charge
2. Atoms are made of even smaller particles
3. Proton, neutron, electron
4. The masses and distribution of the elements isotopes
5. 14
6. 35 protons, 46 neutrons, and 35 electrons
7. Two
8. Metal cations and shared electrons that surround them
9. One-twelfth (1/12)
10. Increasing atomic mass, with similar elements grouped in columns
11. Elements that filled blank spaces in the table
12. Answers will vary:
    1. Halogens – F, Cl, Br, I, At
    2. Noble gases – He, Ne, Ar, Kr, Xe, Rn
    3. Alkali metals – Li, Na, K, Rb, Cs, Fr
    4. Carbon family – C, Si, Ge, Sn, Pb
    5. Ionic compound
    6. Become less metallic
    7. +1
    8. The reactivity of barium is greater because reactivity of group 2A metals increases from top to bottom of the column
    9. Ionic because there is electron transfer
    10. Metalloid
    11. Types and amounts of elements in the alloy
    12. Bronze is harder than copper
    13. Less
    14. Ca²⁺ and Br^–
    15. Covalent
    16. Given
    17. 2
    18. They become more stable
    19. Electrons are not shared equally between atoms
    20. Aluminum sulfide
    21. Iron(III) hydroxide
    22. Iron and carbon

 

biology study guide answers

Biology study guide answer sheet

1. Mitosis
   1. Prophase – spindle fibers appear, chromosomes condense, nuclear envelope disappears
   2. Metaphase – chromosomes line up in middle of cell
   3. Anaphase – chromosomes separate
   4. Telophase – chromosomes unravel, nuclear envelope appears
   5. See in class
   6. Before – interphase (cell growing and DNA is copied); After – cytokinesis (final division of cell.  Forms a cleavage furrow in animal cells and a cell plate in plant cells)
   7. Helps to move the chromosomes during mitosis
   8. Mitosis is cell growth and replication.  Chromosome number is same as the parent (haploid to haploid).  Meiosis is responsible for genetic variation and the chromosome number is split in half (diploid to haploid).
   9. Crossing over of chromosomes in Prophase I
   10. Split in half
   11. Gametes/sex cells: egg and sperm
   12. Nucleotides; sugar, base, nitrogen base
   13. Adenine pairs with thymine, cytosine pairs with guanine
   14. To copy genetic information; interphase
   15. DNA to RNA to Protein
   16. All living things are made of cells, new cells come from existing cells, the cell is the basic unit of life
   17. Prokaryotic and eukaryotic; eukaryotic cells have a nucleus and membrane bound organelles, while prokaryotes do not
   18. Diffusion
   19. Active transport moves substances against the concentration gradient
   20. ATP (adenosine triphosphate); energy is released when the bond is broken between the 2^nd and 3^rd phosphate
   21. Observe, question, make a testable explanation, experiment, collect and analyze data, state findings
   22. Independent variable is the variable that is manipulated by the scientist.  Dependent variable changes according to the independent variable.  A control is what is used to compare results, like baseline data.
   23. Different alleles; same alleles
   24. 50
   25. 50
   26. Pure breed
   27. Living things
   28. 0
   29. It will swell
   30. 75 rose comb and 25 single comb
   31. Response to the environment; rabbit running in the rain
   32. Tt
   33. A control

Book Review: Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching (Part I)

Never Work Harder Than Your Students & Other Principles of Great Teaching by Robin R. Jackson is the book that has been assigned to our faculty to read.  Normally, I would look at the books with disdain as there really does not seem to be enough hours in the day, but the title of this one has me hooked.

Last year, I felt as if I worked harder than ever before and my students performed at the lowest levels I’ve seen since my teaching career.  I feel like this book may possess the secret to solve all my problems!

One thing I like about this book is that it is interactive.  By that I mean that there was a quiz in the introduction to determine what type of teacher you are and the chapters have sections titled “Try This” where you stop and reflect on what you just read.

Chapter One – Start Where Your Students Are

This chapter is focused on getting to know your students.  Not only in the sense of favorites or family life, but getting to know what their values are and what particular traits they have.  Jackson writes about teaching your students how to take a trait that may be negative and teach them how to use it in a good way.  I’ve seen this first hand, as students that may be very disruptive do a complete 180 once they have a specific role in the class.

Another takeaway from this chapter is the “Activity Bag”.  Students bring in 5 items that represent themselves and place it in a bag.  Throughout the month, randomly select a bag, go through its contents and see if the students can guess who it is.  Then the student comes up and explains why they chose the 5 items.  I feel this is a good way to help instill community in the classroom.

Chapter Two – Know Where Your Students Are Going

This chapter emphasizes focusing on the standards, similar to unwrapping the standards as mentioned in the book by Larry Ainsworth.  Last year I was very overwhelmed by unpacking the first nine weeks and never finished the year.  Reading this chapter has encouraged me to unpack one unit at a time.  That way, the task won’t seem as daunting. One interesting mention in this chapter is to lower your standards for students.  This struck me as odd initially because we want our students to reach for high expectations.  By setting the performance standards lower, students actually have a chance to reach above and beyond what is expected.  Of course, in order for students to excel beyond the given standard, they must KNOW what the standard is.

Chapter Three – Expect to Get Your Students There

This chapter has very little to do with teacher expectations of students and instead focuses on teacher expectations of ourselves.  Do we really believe that we can teach students and move them to proficiency despite their shortcomings.  Are we honest enough to realize the difficulties and weaknesses of our students.  This chapter reminded me of how I felt when my AP Environmental Science Students did not do so well on their test.  I actually wrote about it here.  I mentioned that I felt they should have excelled and that their background should not have influenced their performance based on how they did in my class.  An excerpt from the chapter that really spoke out to me…

Many teachers suffer from the same misplaced optimism.  The same false hope that comes from believing that they and their students will be successful without also confronting the brutal facts of their current reality.  We cannot hold onto high expectations for students without also considering the reality of who they are and what they are able to do.

Another important part of this chapter is the mention of not accepting failure in the classroom.  This reminded me of the NMS (not meeting standards) grading policy of our district.  There were many teachers in an uproar regarding the policy, but I favored slightly because it prompted discussion among teachers, students, and parents.  Parents and students were now concerned and asking about grades where before they would receive an F and accept it as if it was the normal grade to receive.

Clearing Desktop Clutter

As the new school year approaches, I want to start fresh…have a clean slate….um….not add to my current state of chaos…

My personal laptop. My computer at work is much, much worse. 😦

Tired of all the clutter, I spent an afternoon cleaning up my space.

Since this is my personal laptop, I designated a folder called “Work” on my desktop for easy access.

There are several categories in this folder:

• AP Biology
• AP Environmental Science
• Biology
• Curriculum and Standards
• Grad School – Union
• Grants/PD
• MEA
• MET Project
• Reference

In the folders for each class, the categories are:

• Assessments
• Assignments
• Lesson Plans
• Media
• Reports
• Resources

Now my desktop is a lot cleaner with my files much easier to find.

This project is far from finished though.

My 8GB Flash Drive is filling up fast with 1.2 GB remaining and I would like to clean it up.  It is also very messy and unorganized.

Then there is my work computer, that I’m sure will take more than one afternoon to fill up.

I am also experimenting with backing up my data online, using a PB Wiki.  With the educator account from PB Wiki, I am able to upload some of my files for easy access.

What are some methods you use to keep your computer files organized?

THEC Workshop Documentary

I know I’m a little late with this, but I wanted to share the documentary I created at the THEC Non-Fiction Workshop.  I learned so much at that workshop and am excited because now my ThinkShow project is done – in my head anyways.

Enjoy!

Accessing You Tube in the Classroom (Memphis City Schools)

If you teach in Memphis City Schools, I’m sure that you are all too familiar with You Tube being blocked in the classroom and seeing this web page.

Not all items on You Tube are bad, but the reality is that there are many items on the site that are not conducive to a positive school climate.  Few people are aware that there is a resource provided by the district where teachers and access and show You Tube videos without consequence, and that resource is Gaggle.

Yes…Gaggle…the email and student learning portal that you may have heard about, but never really took or had the time to see what it is.  To access this resource, all you really need is the website to login and the name of your You Tube video.  Let’s walk through this with a few screenshots.

To log into Gaggle, you will need to enter http://memphis.gaggletn.com/ into the web address bar.  The following screen will appear.

Your login information is the same as your teacher workstation.  You do not have to register or create a new account.  

Once you login, you should see this screen. (Note: Before this screen, another one may appear asking you for an alternative email address in case you forget your password or you may have to approve the “Terms of Use” for the site.)

There are some really cool features listed and I highly encourage you play around to see what is available for you to use in the classroom.  For now, we’ll stick to You Tube.

Under “Applications” scroll down until you find Gaggletube (filtered You Tube) and click on the icon.

I like to type in the specific name of the video along with the You Tube author name for quick results.

All related videos appear and now all you have to do is click and play!  Quite simple isn’t it!  You can even add them to “My Videos” for quick future access.

I love using Gaggletube because it is safe and reliable.  You will never have to worry about it being blocked one day because it is provided  by the district and only teachers can access Gaggletube.

Give it a try and please let me know how it works for you!

Welcome to the wonderful world of teaching!

So you have just received your teaching contract or have been offered a position…great…except for maybe you have not set foot in a classroom for many, many years.  Maybe you went to school for another discipline or you had a different career for 20 years before coming to the classroom.  Whatever the case may be, I’m sure there are many emotions running through you – whether it is fear, anxiety, or excitement.

As a new teacher, it can be very tempting to read every book, scour the web for strategies and advice (maybe that’s how you got here!), or ask veteran teachers for advice.  There is nothing wrong about doing these things and you should be commended for your enthusiasm, but before you do anything else I need you to STOP!

Take a minute to envision how YOU want to run your classroom.  How do you see your daily lessons?  What specific procedures do you want to take place in your class?  How do you want your papers headed?

Some may view those questions as a given, but the truth is that there are many teachers that fail to establish classroom routine and procedures.  This is your LIFELINE!!!  Your class will sink or swim based on what you procedures you choose to set up or not set up.

Once you have a clear picture of how you want your class to run, try it out during the school year.  I’m sure that you will discover that some methods are effective while others are not.  This time is an excellent learning opportunity and as the year progresses, you can modify your procedures as you see fit.  The key is that the procedures exist to begin with.

Again, reaching out to outside sources may not be a bad thing.  It’s just very easy to get overwhelmed by information.  Also, the person advising you may like to lead the classroom while you may like for the students to lead with guidance from you.  By setting the stage and determining your classroom routines and procedures, everything else will fall in line.

Reading strategies and Wikipedia good for the classroom?

This week I am attending a workshop held by UT Chattanooga titled, “Developing Expert Teachers and Students of Nonfiction:  Print, Visual, and Digital”.  This workshop is funded by the THEC (Tennessee Higher Education Commission).  This post serves as a reflection of my learning as well as sharing what I have learned with anyone that may be reading my blog.  Enjoy!  Please feel free to comment and share.

Last night I was asked to read three articles in regards to reading strategies, difficulties and confusion in reading, and the ever so popular Wikipedia.  These articles were very informative and caused me to reflect on past teaching practices and modify some for next year.

I will begin with the first two articles by Leah Straschewski, “Valuing Confusion and Difficulty” and “Best Practices-Reading Strategies”.  From the first mentioned article, there were two main statements that really stuck with me.  The first is that students should be exposed with reading materials in the ‘expressive’ mode, such as “journals, diaries, and personal letters”.  This reinforces my wanting of students to read James Watson’s The Double Helix.  In this book, James Watson describes how him and Frances Crick came to discover the structure of DNA.  While reading, you begin to realize that they were actually pretty normal students, not overly studious, and just stumbled upon the structure.  I think this will be motivating to students as they see that you may have to make many mistakes before you get to the desired outcome.

Also in the article of “Valuing Confusion and Difficulty”, Straschewski mentions that sometimes we will give students a reading assignment for homework, and then WE (teachers) will summarize the material for them in class the next day.  As my facilitator stated today, you have just taught your students that reading is not important.  We must instead guide students to determine their own thoughts and conclusions.

Straskchewski mentions in “Best Practices-Reading Strategies” that it is important for us not only to give students strategies to use, but to also model and practice them in the classroom.  Students should then reflect on the strategy and how well it worked for them and modify if needed.

The strategy of “Glossing” reading is mentioned in the article as well.  In this strategy, students are to underline or highlight any part of the text they choose.  After doing so, they are to write why they feel their marked section is important by utilizing the margin space.  This may be difficult for us, as students have issued textbooks.  As a solution, you could make copies of the text or article and insert them into a sheet protector and have students mark them that way.  You could also cut the sheet protector in half and place it in the textbook.  Students could also use sticky notes to identify parts of text.

Wikipedia good for the instruction?  Whoa.

I never realized that wikipedia could be useful in the classroom until I read the article “Wikipedia Is Good for You?” by James P. Purdy.  In this article, Purdy mentions that wikis can be used as a source and an example of the writing process.

First let’s address wiki’s being used as a source.  When students are initially given a topic, they may be confused or not quite sure how to start.  Wikipedia entries give a good handle on general information on the topic and is usually in an easy to read format.  In some entries, there is an outline of sub-topics that students may use to guide their research.  Each wikipedia entry also has links to other sources and students can use those to begin their research.

Wikipedia serves as a representation of the writing process because the steps to post an entry are very similar: write, review, publish, peer review, edit, publish.  In the workshop, we mentioned how as teachers, we could find an incorrect entry or even create a false entry and challenge students to identify and correct it.  I am thinking of allowing my students to create a wiki page on a topic and have them edit each others pages (with each page being of a different topic).

I’m so excited to have learning so much from just one day!  I can’t wait to learn even more as the week progresses.  I love learning from other teachers as well.  It helps when you can exchange ideas and collaborate.

Sources:

Click to access purdy–wikipedia-is-good-for-you.pdf

http://compfaqs.org/BasicWriting/BestPractices-ReadingStrategies

http://compfaqs.org/English585/ValuingConfusionAndDifficulty

AP Results – The First Year

The scores came in this week and I have to admit that I am very disheartened.  You see, I don’t accept what people tell me as fact.  Things I heard prior to teaching AP is:

• You can expect all 1’s in your first year.
• Teaching AP Bio and APES together for the first time is insane.
• “Our” children do not know how to read well, therefore making them not AP material.

…and many more.

When people told me such things I would register it, but would not believe it.  I continued to teach both classes and survived.  My APES class kept up with the reading better than I did.  And I did end up with one score of 2.

I’m a little upset because I KNEW my APES (AP Environmental Science) class would do much better than they did.  We had great class discussions, they kept up with the reading, they learned from one another, completed numerous PBLs, and much more.

I had both my AP Bio and APES classes come in on a Saturday to take a practice test similar testing conditions and the APES class had many students score 2 and 3 and one student was a point or so away from a 4!

My heart broke when I saw that out of that class only one student received a 2 (the same that almost made a 4 on her practice test).  They could have and should have performed much better.

After discussing my scores with colleagues, I have determined the following action plan for next year…

• Start Friday FRQs earlier in the school year and have them count as tests from the start.
• Separate class and lab to focus more on inquiry skills and content application.  This will require me breaking the labs into smaller components, but that’s okay with me.
• More frequent quizzes during the week to ensure material is learned.
• Building small successes by tiered quizzes.  I will start with level 1 quizzes and build over time for each unit.
• Tests (besides FRQs and Quizzes) will be few and more dense in content.  I’m hoping this will help to build student stamina for a long test such as AP.  (I will turn into Dr. Shear, Microbiology professor from Southern Miss.  His exams were literally 3 hours long!  Mine won’t be so bad, but they will take up the entire class and lab period.)
• More lab exams – with students demonstrating understanding of a lab procedure and concepts by walking me through an experiment.
• More Saturday sessions and practice tests.

I really want the students to be successful but I don’t want to discourage them at the same time.  I was hard enough recruiting for my classes because science is “too hard”.  I want my students to have a true collegial experience, with extra help and guidance from me.  I hope I can reach this balance and that my students score high enough next year to gain college credit.

2010-11 Reflections

As I sit here anxiously awaiting my student AP scores, I cannot help but to reflect on the past year.  I felt that the 2010-11 school year was one of my best as far as instructional practices, but was the worst in regards to test scores (based on EOC results only, not AP).  I tried PBLs, Inquiry based lessons, technology incorporation, teacher collaboration, interdisciplinary lessons…and no results.

Now I’m sure that you can imagine how discouraging it was to see that all of my efforts did not produce the desired results.  Maybe some of you have been there yourselves even.  It is so easy to place blame on the students, parents or administration, but in the end it all boils down to the teacher.  I believe that I have made much progress since my first year teaching.  I also believe that I have plenty more to learn and by doing so, my students WILL perform where they need to in order to be successful.

First, I would like to review my accomplishments of the year and strategies that I felt worked really well:

1. Problem-Based Learning.  I love PBLs because the students are working towards a common goal.  I would like to incorporate many more next year, possibly one for each topic.  There are many out there for use in addition to the ones I have created thus far.  The only issue with PBLs is time, but that should be easier this year with seeing my students daily.
2. Chunking the text.  I did this a lot in my AP Environmental Science class.  Basically, the students would be divided into groups and be responsible for teaching their section to the class.  I can enhance this activity by giving my students a set of questions that they must address.  I lucked up last year because my students were really engaging and often hit every important point without me stepping in.  I hope that I have students that are just as engaged next year.
3. Having a routine.  This is a goal that I have been working on for years and have yet to master.  I did notice that every time I followed a routine, my days went by much more smoothly.  One would think that if I had a great day with a routine I would keep it up…yeah I’m a little special sometimes.
4. Discipline problems way down!!!  During my first year, I had a 1 inch binder packed with infraction forms.  This past year I had so few that I could have kept them in a small folder.  I credit this to adapting my instructional style and coming to terms that I am dealing with teenagers, not robots.
5. Less PowerPoint usage.  I know technology is a very valuable asset to the classroom when used properly.  On a few occasions, I would write out the notes by hand and the students responded better and gave me positive feed back because they could now keep up and they said that I explained things better when I wrote them down.  I guess no matter how hard you may try not to read from the slide, it still comes through as reading from the slide.

I have already mentioned some things I will change in the list above.  Here are a few more:

1. Keep it relative.  If the students do not care, they are lost.  I know that the PBLs will help with this.  I am also planning on incorporating more current events and class discussion to assist with this goal.
2. Plan ahead.  This is really for the labs.  There were so many times last year where I planned to do a lab only to discover that I had to grow plants, bacteria, collect samples, or order living materials.  I don’t like planning too far in advance because I change my mind often, but before the year begins, my labs need to be set in stone and the class schedule needs to work around them – no matter what!
3. Organization is key.  By being organized I will change my class culture by adding more structure.  I have seen this in action and need to remain consistent.
4. Keep it simple.  Sometimes I would get overwhelmed by the workload I was placing on my students.  I did not do it intentionally, but there were just so many things to cover and I felt it was all important.  By focusing on QUALITY assignments instead of quantity, I will make gains in my classroom.

I’m very sure that this list can go on and on or that I will think of something else soon as I hit submit, but the key is, I have a lot of work to do.  To sum it all up, I feel that working on being more organized, streamlining my assignments, and focusing on QUALITY 100% of the time, I will see great gains.  I know that I am a great teacher and that I can make a difference in all of my students’ lives.  The year of 2011-12 will be a productive one and I envision great things happening.