Peek at My Week: Science Genetics Unit and MORE!

Here's to another Sunday spent planning.  The goal for next week is to get a few things planned before the weekend comes! To make this post a little shorter, I am breaking it into two parts. Tomorrow, I will share my reading and writing plans for some Minilesson Magic :)

Science:

This week, we have our mini-unit on genetics scheduled. Our students need to learn the following objectives:
* Explain why organisms differ from or are similar to their parents based on the characterisitcs of the organism.
* Give examples of likenesses that are inherited and some that are not.
For my student journal pgs, click here (free and in a pdf).

Monday: Set up science journals. The label shown above will be pasted into their notebook as a divider for our first unit of study. Complete the "Mice" assessment probe to see what students already think about how traits show up in organisms.

After students think about their own explanations, we will use the explanations above to make a bar graph for how they think offspring's fur color is decided. (This assessment probe comes from Page Keeley, Uncovering Student Ideas in Science).

Use 1st page of heredity video to explain heredity.

Tuesday: Fingerprints Lab (found this gem linked for free online)

Wednesday: Observing Human Traits Lab (free from Tamra Young on TPT); explain dominant and recessive traits and draw conclusions about what traits are dominant/recessive for humans based on classroom data)

Thursday: Complete active sort around the room for Inherited vs Acquired traits and make flipbook (free materials from Jennifer Findley)

Friday: Learn about Punnett Squares with Leprechaun Genetics (free from Making it Teacher

on TPT)
Other Resources that might be thrown in w/ extra time: 
Unit Outline from Moore County (includes a smartboard file to guide the mini-unit)
Peas in a Pod (Mendelian Genetics) online freebie; Questions to go along with the reading selection included (I made these last year)
Heredity (from Brainpop)
DNA (from Brainpop)
Animated Videos that explain DNA, genes, chromosomes, protein, heredity, and traits

Math:
This week in math, I will be getting to know my students better as mathematicians. I'm using some of the journal prompts/explorations from my Math Explorations that focuses on factors. (Not only will we learn about decomposing numbers, but students will be forced to use their multiplication facts). Since my Math Explorations are aligned with the mathematical practices, I thought it would be a good way to introduce concepts like communicating in math, perseverance, using multiple methods for showing work, using different strategies, etc. We are also going to continue working on our Summer Slide questions, which we started on Friday. 
Given time, I will also begin to introduce some of our math stations. For math stations, my team decided that we would have 4 stations this year, MATH SUPERSTARS, CONCEPT FOCUS, ALGEBRAIC, and something computer-based like Moby Max. 

 Morning Meeting:

 We are going to focus on perseverance all week. We have a county-wide assessment that is designed with all tasks focusing on perseverance, so this fits in nicely with morning meeting. The kiddos may not even realize they are being assessed.
Finish Strong
Erik Weihenmayer on Oprah (start at 1:21)


Hope you enjoyed peeking at my week! Tune in tomorrow for my reading/writing minilesson ideas for the week.