Head over to MyGradeBook and check out your Journal Article grade.

Remember, it is 20% of your exam.

If you do not “remember” your password, please get a better organizational system together and see me immediately.

If you have not gotten that assignment to me yet (gulp), please see me immediately.

I’m working on the Journal Article grading this weekend (even though there’s a fantastic marathon of Godzilla movies from the 1960’s playing tonight that keeps distracting me).

Nevertheless, I will have your articles graded with comments and responses by Monday or possibly Tuesday at the latest.

I’ve really been impressed with some of the projects I’ve seen and read today.

In the meantime, have a great weekend and start reviewing for your exams that start on Friday!

Here is the check-in we completed (hopefully) in class today (worth 5 points as a quiz grade):

1. What is your topic?

5. What are 10 pieces of info on your topic thesis that you’ve discovered from your research or experiment?

Journal articles due Friday!

Our final Journal products are due on Friday December 4, which is the Friday of next week!

We’ll discuss this in class tomorrow, but in order to fit everything in (and since we didn’t get all of the materials I ordered due to the backorder shipment), let’s make the following changes…

- You can still choose to do a formal written out essay style journal article (about 3 typed pages double-spaced) on your topic.

- You could also do a combination of any of the presentation styles above.

You get the picture.

I want you to enjoy this project as well as learn from the process.

As always, you will be graded based on the rubric I’ve given you as well as your thoroughness.

Check out the assignments calendar and you’ll see that the Journal Article due date has been moved to Friday December 4, 2009 and will count as part of your exam grade.

That is due to the web being down at school today and the possibility that it will be down more this week.

In the meantime, we’ll be working on our intro to energy (which is a bridge to what we are studying in the Spring).

See you tomorrow!

Wordle is a great site for plugging in a bunch of text and getting a visual representation of the keywords or most used words. This can be useful if you have a paper that you need to read.

So, I decided to plug in some of your Journal Article Check-In’s that were due yesterday. Here are a few results…

Riley’s Check-In:

Bailey’s Check-In:

And Russell’s Check-In (it’s a long story… you can make out the other words in very very small script):

So, go check out Wordle!

Some of you need more time for experiments, so I’m extending the final due date for the Journal Article to Friday Nov 13th. So, the Journal Article Research Prep Guide will be due on Thurs Nov 12th.

This is all changed on our class assignment calendar as well.

Let me know what you think in the comments here or over on the GriffinScience Facebook page.

By now, you should have accumulated some information regarding your journal article (due next Wednesday, btw). You should understand the basics of your topic and have an idea where your research is taking you.

So, please respond to this email with your status.

- Worth 30 Points as a Test Grade
- Please use complete sentences with proper grammar, punctuation and spelling. Google Docs does have spell check.
- What have you accomplished so far?
- What still needs to be done?
- What are you going to do over the weekend to help you gain forward progress?

There is no set length for your response. I’ll be grading you based on how well you’ve used your time and how well you understand your topic at this point (which will vary from person to person, of course).

This is due back to me by midnight tonight and will be the final grade on your progress report for the 2nd Quarter (parent conferences next Wednesday).

Here is the Journal Article Prep guide I sent to your SDS email account this morning:

http://docs.google.com/View?id=dd7gkd7m_107f2gjgjd6

I would open the copy from your email as a Google Doc in your SDS account so you can add in web page URL’s in the section on sources.

This is due by 11:59 P.M. on Tues Nov 10, 2009.

Enjoy!

Congrats to the first inaugural Journal of Middle School Science Editorial Committee, selected from our elections today!

Editor:
Killian Glenn

Assistant Editor:
Kelly Renee Ruffing

Editorial Board:
Avi Borad
Matt Henderson
Harry McBride
Bryson Nager
Andrew Pennington
Elisabeth Speal