For the first marking period, we learned about longitude and latitude and about Polaris (the North Star). We did a lot of labs to help us remember and understand what we were learning (a lot of hands-on activities, which was the basis for science class) and taped the lab sheets into our notebooks. We also took notes at the end of the labs to review what we learned and to add more to our understanding.
We learned about erosion and deposition, weathering, and we learned a bit about our atmosphere. We learned about the different types of weathering (physical and chemical weathering) and we went deeper into the types of weathering (abrasion, dissolution, etc.). We also learned about hurricanes and tornadoes and had to create a book about it, and we wrote a lab report about meandering rivers.
Now we learned about weathering and began our earthquakes and tectonic plates unit. We learned about finding epicenter and we also wrote a climate lab report, which discussed how rain shadow affected the amount of precipitation on the two sides of a mountain. This marking period was rather hectic because of the ELA State exam and the fact that the Regents are coming closer.
We learned about rocks and minerals, identifying igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary rocks, and we began our solar system unit. So far we've done a review on the seasons and Earth's rotation and orbit and we learned about the moon's phases and eclipses.