6th Grade Science: End of March/Early April

In science in 6th grade, we have just finished up learning about bacteria, protists, and fungi, and boy, was it fun..guys! Now, we are moving on to the Animal Kingdom and taking a closer look at vertebrates and invertebrates. Hopefully in a few weeks we will be doing a dissection!

Students will be finishing up their Bacteria labs this week and next week. The students went around the school to different locations and swabbed "specimens" to plate on freshly-prepared agar plates. After plating the bacteria, the students then added a square (on one side of the plate) covered in anti-bacterial hand sanitizer to see if the sanitizer was truly helping us or if it may just be a waste of time. The result? Some groups had an enormous amount of growth, meaning a lot of bacteria, while other groups barely saw a few colonies and some fungus growth (meaning the bacteria was inhibited by the hand sanitizer!). The students will share their results with one another, graph the data, and their analyze the information. They will be given class time to type up their responses and then submit their first real lab report! This is to prepare them for the following years of middle and high school.

Hope you had a great spring break!

Ms. Klee