Water Overdose and Homeostasis

In order to understand homeostasis, we modeled what happens when a person is dehydrated versus what happens when a person drinks too much water. We looked at an extreme case of over hydration and then predicted what happened to our cells when we saturate them with extreme amounts of fluid.

-Mrs. D.

"We did a lab as a class to help us understand homeostasis and osmosis. We took the shell off of two eggs, and then put one of them in 100% water, and the other in 0% water. The egg had about 70% water. After 24 hours, we found that the egg in 100% water had increased in mass, while the egg in the 0% water decreased. This is because cell want to maintain equilibrium with its environment so the cells in the egg that was placed in 100% water, took in some of the water molecules from its environment. The cell in the egg that was in 0% water let out water molecules to maintain equilibrium"

- Emily, Vedanti, Aashika, Pooja

Egg cells soaked in different solutions show dehydration and over hydration.

Look at how Kinley showed her understanding of osmosis, diffusion, and cell membrane transport. Love the creativity!

Mystery Box Challenges

In science, we did a very interesting thing called the Mystery Box Challenge. First, we rolled a huge die to get the number for our mystery box. Then, you tried to do the demonstration with the items inside the box. Some of them represented diffusion, and some osmosis. The diffusion with milk, food coloring, and soap was ours. The food coloring expanded in a wondrous array of colors and swirls and it looked really cool. This amazing demonstration was only one of the many things in the interesting mystery box challenge".

- Adarsh, Om, Vinay

" If you are given a box full of random materials, could you design a lab? We created an experiment using a Petri dish, stopwatch, 2 pill animals, and water. We were able to test whether the amount of water affected osmosis rate in cells. We found that the more water outside the cell, the faster the rate of osmosis."

- Arjun

"We did the Mystery Box Challenge. In the box we had two beakers, we had to get one with hot water and one with cold water. We also had blue and red food coloring to differentiate the waters. We timed how fast the food coloring spread when we kept it in the beakers. I learned that the hotter water let the color molecules spread faster."

-Sownthar

Adventures in Antarctica

Using the app Flipgrid, CMS East science students are learning from a marine biologist in Antarctica! Read this groups thoughts on learning from a professional so far away --

"Everyday we think that when we grow up, we're going to follow our dreams and practice a profession with such good impact on the world. Everyday, we think at least once that we are going to help change the world for the better. But one thing I know is that none of us would, without hesitation, go straight to Antarctica to follow our dreams and change the world. We think of our dreams as impossible, limited, wonderful things. We think of our dreams as palaces and wealth, but we do not ever aspire to go to a desolated continent to research. We have learned from Laura, the Marine Biologist that it is important to keep what you love when you are leaving your home. She continues to love Cheetos even thought they aren't in Antarctica. We have also learned that we need perseverance and problem-solving skills in life, and we cannot be forever reliant on other people. We need to take charge of our life and what we want and learn accordingly. We need to solve our own problems because it will help us later in life when we are living alone and perhaps working a career. Laura, the marine biologist in Antarctica, has taught us a lot about life skills and following your dreams."
- Veda, Shriya, and Kavya

Check it out at https://flipgrid.com/antarctica

Cell Survivor

"We are doing a project called cell survivor in class. It is like the TV show Survivor where we have to try to do many activities and provide good facts about our organelle to not get voted out of the cell or island. We have different organelles assigned to us like the Golgi, Lysosomes, ER, and many more. We research facts and do immunity challenges as well. Immunity challenge winners can't be voted off the cell for that round. The final one that is left is the winner."
- Naman, Neal, Yoichiro

Students created organelle models out of recycled materials to show the structure of their organelle. These models were used during round two of presentations.

Sketchnotes

Students created sketchnotes or visual notes to show connections between vocabulary words.  By connecting the words and definitions to the images, students are able to better remember these concepts.  Check out some outstanding sketchnotes done by our awesome 7th graders!
- Mrs. D.

Created by Harika

Created by Pooja

Created by Areebah

Cell Structure Lab

"We did a lab on cells in science class. We looked at many samples of plants, like Spirogyra (freshwater algaeI and Elodea (aquatic plant). We also got to look at our own cheek cells. It was really cool and weird to look at our own cells, and seeing our cells made us more aware of the fact that we are actually just made of a bunch of cells grouped together."
- Adarsh, Sam, Jiwoong

Look at these amazing images students captured with their iPads!