8th grade: We're working on an Alien Periodic Table, and taking our final Periodic Table exam Friday 04 December.

7th grade: We're finishing up our Earthquake unit this week, and taking the exam Friday 04 December.

Both grades have an extra credit assignment available to them on their respective homework boards.

All 2nd quarter work is due Thursday 10 December. NO EXCEPTIONS!

Science Fair will be introduced in the next week. Students will be bringing home an information packet that includes the following pages:

La Paloma Academy’s

General Science Fair Rules

The SARSEF (Southern Arizona Regional Science and Engineering Fair) official rules can be found at http://www.sarsef.org/. LPA will be adhering to the general rules, along with the following additional expectations.

• Participation in the LPA Science Fair is mandatory.
• LPA highly encourages group projects, but groups cannot have more than 2 students in them. Once a partner has been chosen, the group can only be changed with prior teacher permission.
• Student projects must be approved by the teacher before they are started. Projects that do not have prior teacher approval will not be eligible for judging.
• LPA will be holding a school Science Fair on February 19, 2010. Students who wish to be considered for the SARSEF have an additional set of expectations:
• Academic eligibility: Students with below an 80% in Science cannot be considered for SARSEF participation.
• Students must indicate to their teachers before they begin their project that they wish to be considered for SARSEF. They will not be eligible for consideration without teacher approval beforehand.
• Students who wish to be considered for SARSEF are encouraged to work alone (no partner).
• Student journals: Each aspect of the Science Fair will be collected by the teacher and kept in a student folder, this will suffice for the student journal for those students not participating in SARSEF; students who wish to be considered for SARSEF need to follow an additional set of rules regarding the student journal, which will provided in the official SARSEF packet.

Science Fair is designed as an independent project. Students should not expect to complete the project during class time: Science Fair projects must be completed at home, during students’ allotted homework time.

Science Fair Grading

Each piece of the Science Fair will receive two grades: one for on-time completion, and one for quality of work. Your teacher will explain the expectations for each section. The final Science Fair Board will receive a grade based on the following matrix:

category	student fell below expectations if...	student met expectations if...	student exceeded expectations if...
project complexity	project is not experimental (i.e. modeling or demonstrating without variable manipulation)	experimental in nature shows an understanding of scientific variables	variable manipulation is thought out for more than one possible relationship
hypothesis	handwritten no “If... then...” statement used does not address the problem as stated	typed “If... then...” statement clearly addresses the stated problem	shows an advanced understanding of causality and metaphoric relationships
materials list	handwritten does not include all materials used includes erroneous items	typed clearly lists all materials used	specifically lists materials to demonstrate understanding of the impact of the materials on the variables being tested
procedure	handwritten written as a narrative poor grammatical conventions evident	typed written as a series of step-by-step directions clearly stated so as to allow an exact replica of the experiment to be carried out	demonstrates an advanced understanding of variable manipulation and control
analyzed data	messy unlabeled or mislabeled	neatly graphed or drawn in pen appropriate format to demonstrate understanding of variable relationships appropriately labeled	computer generated graphs/charts
results and conclusion	handwritten does not demonstrate an understanding of the data poor grammatical conventions evident	typed addresses data addresses hypothesis	synthesizes experiment results with real-world applications, demonstrating an understanding of the importance of scientific modeling in a controlled environment
abstract	handwritten poor grammatical conventions evident written as a first person narrative	typed succinctly summarizes experiment written in the third person	demonstrates a clear understanding of neutral, objective scientific language
board presentation	messy unlabeled or mislabeled missing pieces	neat has all appropriate pieces, clearly labeled	demonstrates artistic effort and time as appropriate to the subject

Jr. High: These are your

Dates to Remember

Monday 07 December	Science Fair Introduced
Wednesday 09 December	Permission Slip Due Project Picked Out
Friday 11 December	Hypothesis Due
Monday 14 December	Procedure Due Materials List Due
Monday 11 January	Experiment Complete Raw Data Due
Friday 15 January	Analyzed Data Due
Monday 25 January	Conclusion Due Proof of Board Provided
Monday 08 February	Abstract Due
Wednesday 17 February	Final Board Due
Friday 19 February	LPA Science Fair/Judging