Wetland, Wildlife, and My Community

On January 6th 2010, someone from the Rehabilitation Society of Edmonton came to our school to teach us about wildlife. She taught us that if you find or your friend brings you a baby deer, bird or hare that is all on its own, you should leave it alone, because their mother put them there while she's gone looking for food. The mother leaves them alone and is not worries about her baby being found by predators because the babies have no scent (but baby birds do have scent), so when foxes look for them, the baby deer or hare will not get hurt. When an animal is hurt, they first examine it to see if it is really hurt. A baby hare’s defense is to hide and stay still while its parent is away.

Of the animals that are here in Edmonton, 15% are mammals and 85% are birds (of that, 15% are raptors, 20% are water fowl, and 65% are songbirds). Of the animals that are brought in or picked up and brought to the Rehabilitation Society of Edmonton, most are birds and some small mammals. There are usually only a few raptors brought in, such as owls or eagles. The owls can hiss like cats sometimes. Workers must be very careful when handling animals such as raptors.

Birds

We learned about different kinds of birds. Here are some: Songbirds, waterfowl, raptors. These birds can be divers and dabblers…
Divers: dive into the water.
Dabblers: Stick only head into the water when they’re swimming.

Some defenses:
-Pretend their wing is broken
-Quack
-Fluff up their wings to look big
-Parents dive bomb to protect nest/babies

They gave us their hotline and website, so if we do find an injured animal, we can call them and find out what to do. It was a very interesting presentation!

Hotline: 780 – 914 – 4118
Website: wildlife-edm.ca

-J

Alien In-Line

We played several games, two of which were skittles and dodge ball. The kind of gear you need while in-line skating is a helmet, shoulder pads, knee pads, and wrist guards.

The teacher was a guy named Kenny. At the gym, we learned how to skate and brake and then had some free time to play tag. From January 21-28 (Thursday to Thursday) Kenny taught us how to in-line skate. The first day, he introduced himself and taught us how to put on the gear. Some people were fast at putting on their gear, so they got to do free-skating around half of the gym until the rest of us got the gear on. Once everybody’s gear was on, we could use the whole gym.

On the 6th day, we got to play dodge ball and skittles; I think most of us liked it.
I think that braking and turning at high speeds is hard. We also played dynamite, handball and king court. We did not do too well at these games, as it was not easy because we were on skates.

By C & C

WISEST - Women In Scholarship, Engineering, Science & Technology

Wisest is a program offered to grade six girls who are interested in science and engineering. Grade six girls from selected schools write essays if they are interested in attending. Then the teacher from that school who will be taking the girls on the trip will select the four best essays and tell the writers of the essays that they were selected.

The day of the program, we walked to a building in the U of A and went to the place where Dr. Margret Ann Armor would be talking to us. We arrived a few minutes before she started. She talked to us, then she showed us some cool science experiments. First she had a piece of paper that she lit on fire; it burned slowly and it burned into letters. When it stopped burning, it read “Hi”. After that, she put red cabbage juice and another liquid in a container, and it turned green which shows that the other liquid is a neutral. She then added dry ice to it, making it orange, which indicated that it is an acid. She added one more liquid to it, making it purple (purple is an indicating colour of bases), but it quickly went back to an acid (orange). Then she froze a banana in liquid nitrogen, but she only froze half of it; with the frozen half she hammered a nail into a wooden board, then she ate the other half. These were just some of the experiments she did.

After that cool presentation, I think everyone was excited to get started on our activities. The activities ranged from extracting gluten from flour to making a picture frame out of two pieces of newspaper that could fit five people in it. These are some of the activities the girls from our school did. After we all got into groups, we went to our first activity. Our activity was food chemistry, where we had to get all the gluten out of flour. She then showed us how vegetables can bleed. One was fresh, the other was frozen. Only the fresh ones bled. We also did a smell test were we had to smell different foods.

In our next activity we made the tallest tower we could out of 20 toothpicks, 6 straws and 1 cup of shaving cream; it was lots of fun. After that, everyone from all the schools that participated came together in one big room and did an activity. In this challenge, we worked in a group with the other girls from our school and made the tallest tower out of one sheet of newspaper, a paper ruler, 6 straws, and 30cm of tape. It was a very difficult challenge. We went back to the place where Dr. Armour talked before. To end the event, she did more experiments, including one where she used grape juice to make sparkling lemonade, milk, water and raspberry smoothie. We feel that it changed our perspectives on science and engineering.

By H2O

City Hall Mock Meeting

Our class went to city hall and held a mock council. We all had an important role that we participated in. Our class voted on a mayor who we called Mr. Mayor. Two people were "special interest groups"; one was arguing for the EXPO and the other was arguing against. One person was the city clerk and, last but not least, the rest of the students were councilors.

We all learned how to deal with an important role in life. In that hour we also learned how to reach for goals that may seem impossible, but also how to tell ourselves that we can do it anyway. We altogether saw that we can use democracy, even in just a small place such as our classroom, just like how we had to vote on our class pet’s name. Some situations in life may come up where we have to remember our knowledge of democracy; we might even have to use it.

Our whole class enjoyed being able to use the microphones to talk to the rest of the council members. Our tour guide notified us that they have a great microphone system so we wouldn’t yell or speak loud into the microphone. We also got a tour of the building and our class was able to go into the room where the City Council has their meetings. There was a dome on the roof that the tour guide was able to close for us, but it was too bad that it only lasted a few seconds(30 seconds); we all wish it lasted longer.

"The Mayor" and our teacher got to go into the mayor’s secretary's office and sign the guest comment book. Some other people in the class also wanted to, but they weren’t allowed to. The book was big and red and it sort of looked like an old time book.

The EXPO lost because "a nearby house-owner" convinced the councilors to vote for not having the EXPO in 2017, because of the land it would use and the pollution it would cause. The over-all experience was great!

By, M & C

Classroom Chemistry - Filtration & Mixtures

In science class, we were creating mixtures of salt, sand and rocks. We studied the mixtures with worksheets and diagrams and then we collected information. Then the entire class discussed their various ideas of filtration to separate the sand, salt, and rock mixture. There were ideas like anti-centrifugal force, the fan idea (the different masses separated by wind), and the fish tank idea (different levels of filters).

FUN FACT: Salt is less dense than sand.

The next day we actually built a filtration system, and used it. Water was poured and the rocks were caught in a large mesh. The sand seeped through and got stuck in a coffee filter, while the salt landed in a beaker with the water. Then we evaporated the water to leave the salt behind.

Question & Answer

Why did the salt stay behind instead of evaporating?

Because the salt is too heavy to evaporate, it stays behind in its solid state.

Has all of the salt been isolated after the evaporation of the water?

No, probably not. Some salt may have gotten caught in other parts of the filtration system and stayed mixed with the sand or rocks.

By: R & K

Art Gallery

We (room 17) went to the Edmonton Art Gallery on December 8th, 2009 to learn about architecture and art. We were there for three hours. We went to the City Hall that same day, but that’s a different story. Anyway, when we got there our class got split up into two groups and we were given tours of the gallery. We were shown photos, drawings, and models on different buildings around the world. One of the buildings we were shown was a technology building that had a school in it too, but was never built. Another one of the many photos was a few photos of buildings that were built in ancient Greece and are still standing, which is pretty cool.

After looking at the pictures we were told to create our own buildings with the three other people in our group, using the pictures we had seen as inspirations. The materials we used were clear plastic, cardboard, egg cartons, paper towel rolls, etc. Everyone’s was unique and different. Everyone had different inspiration including a bottle, Fort Edmonton and a Wii remote. We were given sheets that told us what the topic was, what it was going to have inside it, where it is located, the weather, the climate, etc.

The people who worked there gave us a sheet of paper where we drew our design. We were also able to brainstorm on the huge sheets of paper that covered the tables. Then we started to build the structures using the sheet we had used earlier to do the planning. We used the materials as we mentioned above. Our whole group had to work on it to finish in time. We had about one hour to complete our buildings. Once we were done we shared what it had inside of it, where is located, the weather, the climate, and our inspirations.

We all had tons of fun and we learned a lot of interesting things about architecture and buildings. Thanks for reading!!

BY M & J

Evidence and Investigation

The grade sixes of room 17 (along with room 21 and 24) went to the Bennett Centre to have an adventure of evidence and investigation.

We had a chance to be a pretend detective, forensic scientist and a lawyer. First we observed what we saw in the “crime scene” and memorized what we saw. The teacher went through some rules of being a detective; the one that stood out most to me was that if you saw a glass with something that looked like coke in it, you couldn’t say “I saw a glass with coke in it” you would need to say “I saw a glass with a coke-like substance.”

The story of the crime is there was a guy named Felix Navidad. Nobody really liked Felix; he was rich and never had a job for more than a month. He was throwing a party in his beach house with some of his closest friends, even though they didn’t consider him to be their friend. The only reason Gene, Kendra, Alfredo and Vera came was because Felix told them that they where in his will. During the hour that his friends were there, Felix was murdered.

As a Forensic scientist we did a whole bunch of tests on most of the things left on the crime scene. The grade six’s spilt up into pairs or threesomes. Here is a taste of what some of the stations were:

A Stain Test: we had three strips of paper: one with felt pen, one with food coloring, and another one that could have been either, but we didn’t find out what it was until we took the test.

Litmus Paper Cola test: we dipped a litmus paper in the victims drink to see if it had been meddled with, then we dipped the paper in Alfredo’s drink (Felix’s friend) to see if it was the same as Felix’s. It wasn’t. Felix’s drink had been messed with.

Smell/Scent Test: Another one of the tests we did was identifying a smell. A scent was left on a towel that was found on the scene. On the station, there were small bottles/samples of the suspects cologne. We smelt the towel then opened one of the bottles and smelled the scent inside until we found the one that matched.

Those examples are just some of the fun things we did.

As a lawyer we had to take the evidence that the detective and forensic scientists gave us (everybody was a detective, forensic scientist and a lawyer). We then decided who was guilty. Even though lawyers may have a lead they can never be sure if they’ve got the right person, unless they confess. Even then you would never know if they where lying or telling the truth.

Overall, it seems that everyone thought that the day was fun, yet challenging. If I could do it again, I would definitely do it!

By: MK