Our seventh graders are amazing inventors! They spent three months brainstorming problems and coming up with a solution in the form of an invention. Then they researched the patents of different, related products, made and tested a prototype, and created their invention. Ideas range from a non-bruising grapefruit picker, to Tangle-Me-Not, a hair-detangler and brush in one, to the self-explanatory Guinea Pig Hay Shield, to a spinning rack for nail polish, to a magnetic bracelet clasp “KraZ Klasp,” to a playground for hermit crabs — the Crabitat, a neck straightener for sore backs, an easy golf ball marker, and the Beforganizer to help students get organized in the morning.
Eighth graders conducted tests on their fellow students and teachers in the testing phase of their three-month long science projects. Frances Chick, our newly hatched chicken, is eagerly awaiting the results of the tests!
Sixth graders spent three months testing a product to see if if lived up to its commercial claims. Here are a few of the fabulous projects that resulted from this inquiry.
Middle Schoolers visited Mesa College to see the exhibit of their work for Canyon Day. Campus Ambassadors gave them tours of the campus.
Students learned about the wonder of the evolution of anniotic eggs — eggs with a shell and an amnion, a membrane to support the embryo’s life. We incubated chicken eggs, dyed eggs using vegetable dyes from our school garden, and make an Amniotic Trailer Park, with pictures of hard-shelled trailers, submarines and space ships that, like eggs, contained food, waste storage, a cushion against falls, and oxygen exchange.
The best part of the study was watching our new chick, Frances Chick (she’s as smart as Frances Crick!) hatching from her egg!
Students of all ages learned about vertebrates — animals with backbones — by building backbones for imaginary animals, examining real animal skeletons — such as the vetebrae of a grey whale below — making fish prints with a tilapia, and meeting live animals that visited our classroom. They also painting pictures of the animals of Tecolote Canyon to display at Mesa College for Canyon Day.
Students got up close and personal with a variety of invertebrates in our Animals and Plants unit to get a better understanding of animal evolution and invertebrate characteristics.
5th and 6th graders visited SDSU Professor, and TCPS parent Dr. Elizabeth Waters’s biology lab to learn Dr. Waters and her graduate students study how plants adapt to low-water, high-heat stress. We visited her lab, growth chambers, and green house, and learned the variety of places that scientists study plants — out in the field, in highly controlled growth labs, and in green houses. Students also were able to use very high tech light meters to measure how much light plants get in particular locations, and then take that information into the growth chambers to measure how the particular plants Dr. Waters studies take in light and use it to photosynthesize. Students were impressed by the carnivorous plants shared by Bob, who is in charge of the greenhouse, the giant freezer that is so cold it stops all atomic activity, the centrifuges, micro-pipettes, lab benches and lab notebooks graduate students are using in their studies.
