Happy, Healthy Halloween

This is a food label. The label tells us what nutrients are inside our food. That is why it says "Nutrition Facts" at the top.

The label tells us the amount of nutrients in one serving of the food. We know how much food is in a serving from the serving size -- How many pieces of candy? How many cookies? How many chips?

Sometimes the label will list the serving in grams, which measure how much the package or group of food weighs. One gram weighs about as much as one paper clip. You can find the serving size below the "Nutrition Facts" heading.

Calories are a way of measuring energy we get from food. One serving of food has a set number of calories inside it that our body makes into energy. You can find the number of calories in a serving below the serving size.

If you eat 2 servings, you eat 2 times the number of calories on the label. If you eat 5 servings, you eat 5 times the number of calories. (If you eat 5 servings, you probably are eating too much. What does your body do with that extra calorie energy?)

Calories from fat are the amount of energy from fat in the food. Fat is a kind of nutrient. Some types of fat are good for you in small amounts.

The total energy that we use up and get from food makes up our metabolism.

Nutrients: Games and Notes

Click here for a Halloween nutrient game!

When we eat, our digestive system breaks food down into nutrients. Nutrients are the chemicals inside food that help us live and grow.

Nutrients react (mix) with chemicals inside our saliva and stomach. When too many of the stomach chemicals (acid) react, we get sick to our stomach and throw up -- and acid burns our throat!

Our small intestine cleans the nutrients with small hairs (villi), like in the picture here. The clean food goes through the intestine tube walls to the blood.

Blood circulates good nutrients. It takes them around the body for energy. Our large intestine gets rid of the garbage left over. We flush out when we go to the bathroom.

The chemical energy from food adds up to make our metabolism. We know our metabolism by how fast we burn calories, a way to measure energy. That's what you'll do in the game.

Climbing Science Hill

Some students asked for pictures of Yale, which is where Ms. Miller went to college. Here is a picture of "Science Hill," which is where students at Yale study science. The buildings are called "Science Hill" because they all sit one hill that looks over "the Have." (Yale is in New Haven, Connecticut, a small city an hour north of the Bronx by train or car. Some Yalies, or Yale students, call New Haven "the Have." Ms. D'Ascoli's students have another word for these Yalies from word study: ridiculous.)

An online tour of Yale, "ScienceBack Goes Back to Yale," is coming soon.

Mo-tivators: Digestive System Quiz

How close did each class come this week to hitting the Big Mo, our goal of 80 percent mastery of each week's learning objectives?

#1 Arias (501), 64.8%
#2 Samuels (233), 60.0%
#3 D'Ascoli (500), 56.3%
#4 St. Marie (502), 53.5%
#5 Rios-Beltran (522), 46.7%

Good work, but we've got a long way to go to hit an 80 percent mean!

The week's "Mo-tivators" are below. "Mo-tivators" scored 80 percent or above on the Big Know weekly quiz.

Samuels
Robert

Rios-Beltran
Jonathan
Josue

D'Ascoli
Ciara
Amanda
Aliah
Xena
Shaiasia
Jhoanna
Leslie

Arias
Gaby
Dieshell
Jennifer
Merlin
Yehaziel
Neville
Kelly
Ryeasha
Christopher

St. Marie
Ariana
Edwin
Imani
Kevin R.

Science Says

I believe the children of PS163's science labs are our future.

Some things I learned in science is that an organism is a complex adaptive living system of organs. I learned about the Big Mo and a Big Vo. In the big Mo I learned about the cells that is in my body. The cells are the smallest building in your body. I also learned from my science teacher is that we had microscopes. I think my science teacher is really cool. When I was in 4th grade I never knew this stuff but now I know it. Thanks.
-- Chelsea

I learned about the digestive system and how it works. We first chew the food. Then we wet it with saliva. It goes down the esophagus. It goes down the stomach and to the intestines. Finally down the colon.

I went to scienceback.blogspot.com and played the game. The game is about the digestive system. You need to put the parts on the part. When I finish playing the game I go to study for my quiz on Thursday. I use it to study for digestive system.
-- Walter

After Walter used ScienceBack.blogspot.com to study the digestive system, he scored 30 percent higher on this week's quiz than last week. That sounds like Big Mo-tivation to me!

N*Sync With Science

Click here for the words to "ScienceBack," our class rendition (version) of the Justin Timberlake single. Any student or group of students who memorizes the song and performs it for the class with choreography (a dance to go along) will win a special prize. If you're too shy to stand up in front of the group, write another verse so we can "take it to the chorus!"

If enough of the fifth grade learns the song this way, I will try to videotape us for YouTube. That way every fifth grader in America can bring science back with us. And maybe we'll get famous.

*Also, we will bring science back to the forefront of the national policy agenda, thereby reinvigorating the movement toward higher academic standards in American elementary education. Hooray!

Digestion Questions -- Study for the quiz! Play a game!

(Scroll down through this quick reading for the game.)

Teeth chew up our food. Saliva from our tongue breaks the food up even more so it will slide down our throat.

Our throat has a food tube inside called the esophagus. It moves the food down into our body by a muscle motion called peristalsis.

After food goes through the esophagus it goes into the stomach. The stomach has chemicals inside it which break up the food into invisible pieces.

From the stomach the food parts go into longer intestine tubes. Intestines clean the food pieces so they can move into the blood and become energy.

There are two kinds of intestines, the small and the large. The small intestine is long and thin -- 20 feet long, in fact! The large one is thick and short.

The colon is part of the large intestine. It gets rid of our food trash when we go to the bathroom.

Digestive system game

It's All Greek To Me

In reading, we predict, or guess, what will happen next in a story. In science, we can predict what will happen next in an experiment.

Scientists make a lot of predictions, so they write them in a special way. A hypothesis is an ancient Greek word for a science guess.

Each hypothesis sentence uses the same words:
1) "If ______________..."
2) "...then _______________."

So you don't confuse a hypothesis with a hippotamus, remember this...
Hypo = Under
Thesis = Argument

A hypothesis is a guess we use as an argument under our whole experiment. Ifsomething happens, then something else will happen, too!

*Clyde Crashcup was the scientist on the old Alvin and the Chipmunks cartoons. He was a genius, but sometimes he would get his vocabulary words confused. You can learn more about Clyde and his lab assistant Leonardo here.

They Blinded Me With Science

Ms. Rios-Beltran's bilingual scholars let us in on what they've learned so far this year... one language, one time only!

I learned complicated words that I can't remember and I learned that every time I don't get the Big Mo I definitely need to retake the test and try better every day. I learned that things that you eat and things that are not living things and things that are living can be just like the human skin. I learned that the veins bring back the blood to the heart. I learned that the body of a human can be very complicated and that you do not only need lungs and air to breath, people need oxygen.

-- Patrick

In science I learned that with a microscope you ould see little stuff like germ. I learned that you can do fun experiment like check the temperature of ice in water. You can make like putting water in a cup and putting black pepper in the water then you can grab a glove and put it in the water and it can feel soft or gross. You can learn about hypothesis and cells and tissue. That can be a lot of fun learning about this stuff. I learned about the Big Mo and great stuff about science you can even learned about skin cake.
-- Paola

I think that this year is going to be really fun. With learning science because Ms. Miller is going to do really fun experiments for us... One day I know that we are going to be the best class in the whole school. Also we are going to get all those fun experiments that Ms. Miller wants to teach us.

--Adrian

"Organ-ize This"

Study for this week's "Big Know" with a digestive system game! Match the organ to its job on a human body cartoon.

I didn't make up the "Organ-ize This" title, but I so would've... which I note in my valley girl writer's voice for my girls in Ms. D'Ascoli's class.

Digestive System Game (HealthTrek)

ScienceBack -- The Single

"ScienceBack"
Southsidebronx TweenSounds
Fifth Grade, feat. Miss Nuala
Big Mo Records

We're bringing science back
We're here to teach you science facts
We know that you know how to act
To learn how chemicals react

More verses to come. We will try to get an mp3 or video soon.

Charles (Drew) in Charge

At the start of every unit, each fifth grade class gets a real-life scientist Role Mo-del to guide our own studies toward the Big Mo. Ms. Samuels' students want someone like Charles Drew in charge the next time they need a blood transfusion...

Charles Drew was African-American. Charles was a doctor and a scientist. Charles makes needles for people. Charles Drew was the famous scientist of the world. Charles helped people to live. Charles knows about lots of things about science. Charles Drew loves science a lot because he likes to me stuff and to be smart all day.

-- Joshua

I learned that Charles Drew was a miracle and that he was a doctor and he used to cut people very open and their heart and lungs. You can see anything about the body.

--Oscar

What is the Big Mo?

"The Big Mo" is short for mo-tivation. In class we motivate ourselves and others to master 80 percent of 5th grade science standards by the end of the school year. To know whether we are getting closer to our goal, we take a "Big Know" quiz on what we have learned every Thursday. Every week, we hope to hit that magic number, and celebrate the student "Mo-tivators" who do. These quizzes review our new science vocabulary, which we call—can you guess?—"The Big Vo."

To get the Big Mo, we must remember to follow our class rules or "M.O.":

Be polite
In class, work together
Get work done on time
Make the effort
Own your actions

Bringing Science Back

My name is Ms. Miller. (As some of my students like to add, "at science I'm killer.")

At P.S. 163, the fifth grade is bringing science back. This site is here so we can teach you science facts. This is our online resource for homework and class enrichment activities.

Welcome.