8th period today, there was a mad rush to sign up for birdwatching. 4th and 8th periods had first shot this time. 1st period will get first shot next round. Students have been very good at recording data on a daily basis. Tomorrow we will finish up our miniunit on plants and dive right into simple animals by the end of the week. Friday you'll get to meet my pet hydras. Planaria on Monday (if they survive the weekend).

Sunday I snowshoed up behind the school to get a good look of the woods without any leaves. It's pretty cool back there. I also saw a spot where a rabbit must have been taken out by a fox or some other mammalian carnivore. Looking forward to spending more time in the outdoor classroom this spring.

Friday night several Tri-Sci girls headed over to Cornell for a presentation from a world-reknowned forensic scientist who even testified in the OJ Simpson case. After dinner he gave an excellent slide show on several crime scenes he investigated.
Here, MIKAELA, ASHLYN, EMILY, and NICOLE watch the presentation.
8th graders CORINNE and AMBER calculate average diameter of simulated blood splatter from different heights.
EMILY, JAI, and ASHLYN shoot for accuracy.

A couple weeks ago I went to the student art show at the Red Door... unfortunately there weren't any students there to show me their work = ) Everything looked great though. I was impressed by your creativity. Photo credit: Ms. Zraik.

We had one of our last microscope labs of the year today. SIERA, KRAIG, and NICK get a good look at a variety of protozoa. Our samples had tons of Euglena swimming around (by means of their flagella).

Malaria was today's topic and it tied in nicely with some action, 8th grade ELA teacher, Ms. Bassette has recently initiated. This week students have been bringing in spare change to purchase insecticide-treated bed nets to cut down on mosquito exposure. More info on the program can be found here and here.

Interesting article from Time.com regarding the war on bacteria.

Let's start the 2nd 1/2 of Life Science off right! With a fantastic version of Carl Orff's "O Furtuna" for some motivation. (Must be viewed outside school to evade the internet filter.)

The following students scored over a 90% on their Midterm exam. Nice Job guys! ALEN Q., COURTNEY W., BRANDON P., LEVI H., JORDAN T., RICKY N., STEPHANIE B., KEEGAN D., KYLE J., BRETT C., and TYRONE C. JENNA S. and JASON H. both got a 100! Tomorrow you will get a 2nd quarter grade sheet, to show your parents, summarizing your grade so far. You have one week to change it.

Today we played Jeopardy to help review for tomorrow's midterm exam. KYLE, JASON, MIKE, COURTNEY, BRANDON, and DOM prepare their final Jeopardy answer. Make sure you look over your old tests and the powerpoint slides I gave to everyone.

ELA EXAM THIS WEEK!
Well here's a little advice from your science teacher. First of all, DO NOT stress out. Eat a breakfast. You have 55 minutes on day one and 35 on day two. This is MORE than enough time for each, however you must stay at your seat for that amount of time. I suggest "chipping away" at your test. Do a couple questions and then take a short break. Do a couple more, take a break, etc. Your goal is to kick this test's butt. You want to "prove" to Mr. Lott that this test was simple and you understood what the questions were asking. Try to write MORE than you normally would and don't leave anything blank. GOOD LUCK!

Today was spent at review stations to help cover different topics we have learned so far this year. Friday's midterm exam will cover all topics we have done so far this year. However, it is mostly just chopped up old exams. No worries! Make sure you review you old exams and the review powerpoint slides.

Today we acted out our movie roles in class for our films dealing with bacterial and viral infections. I saw a lot of great performances and look forward to a few more next week.

Dr. OLTZ diagnoses KAITLYNN with rabies right before she infected KATIE.


QUINNER seeks help from Dr. GRAHAM after his rabid poodle "Mindy" bit him.

Dr Prettylips (DANIELLE) helps out DANICA with her illness.

Wow! It was great to see so many people show up to Wednesday night's movie, An Inconvenient Truth. We had 16 students show up and over 30 total including parents and Mr. Filzen...probably breaking all sorts of fire codes. ROBERT, ALEN, MACK, QUIN, MIKE G., NICOLE W., MIKAELA, MARTIN, ASHLYN, SHYANNE, JAI, MARISSA, FELICIA, STEVEN, KAITLYNN H., and EMILY all showed up and received 7 extra credit points. Interested in helping to reduce carbon dioxide emission? First, calculate your impact. Then check out this, this, and this.

This was sent to me from Mrs. Riese:

We have seen some of the affects of global warming/causes of nature when we visit Alaska. There is a glacier between Anchorage and Seward (Portgage Glacier) that I used to visit when I was a kid and you could touch the glacier from the parking area. Now the glacier is roughly seven miles into the mountains and they have made it more of a tourist attraction by offering mini cruises in the glacier waters. They have set up a neat display and "touch and feel" exhibit in the tourist center.

This was sent from Mrs. Hilsinger:

The Walmart effort:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/walmart_to_sell.php

http://www.walmartstores.com/GlobalWMStoresWeb/navigate.do?catg=685
On Gore:

[Gore] said he was "carbon neutral" himself and he tried to offset any plane flight or car journey by "purchasing verifiable reductions in CO2 elsewhere".
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/wales/5028470.stm

The Ice sheet that broke off:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/12/29/canada.arctic.ap/index.html

Also, thank you to Mrs. Burkgren and others as well that have responded positively to the issue.

How many of you like fishing? Mr Rhoads brought a pretty scary virus to my attention. This virus, viral hemorrhagic septicemia (VHS), came from Europe and is killing a lot of different fish species throughout New York and other states. This is bad because most viruses only target a few closely-related species but this thing infects most fish species. As of right now there is no cure and it could be a huge problem later on. More information can be found here.

Today we spent most of class working on our scripts for our movies on bacteria and viruses. Here, Quinner works diligently on his masterpiece.


After a long time without accumulated snowfall, we finally got some and that meant a busy day at the bird feeder. Here, EMMA, ASHLEY, MEGAN, and JESSY spend rec. watching and recording birds.

DONOVAN, RICKY, and TYRONE research infectious diseases for their movie scripts in the LMC. While writing your lines make sure you keep the question, "Would people pay $7.00 to watch this movie?" in the back of your mind. However, make sure you talk about symptoms, transmission, treatments, and other information in your dialog. Your doctor might tell your patient about famous people that have that disease. You are being graded on that stuff (content). Good luck and get creative! The following links will help: HERE HERE HERE and HERE. Due Tuesday 16 January.

Interesting news article out today on CNN. We just talked about meningitis yesterday! This Rhode Island school district had to be shut down because of a death they think is related to viral meningitis.

Wednesday 10 January at 7pm sharp I will be showing An Inconvenient Truth for all students and parents in my room. This was last summer's documentary on global climate change. Please email your RSVP so I can have an idea on numbers. I will provide desserts, juice, tea, and a few extra credit points. Hope to see you there.

Today we started our unit on bacteria and viruses. We often think of humans as the top of the food chain, however, if there were one group of organisms that could claim that prize it would be these microscopic marvels. Despite the bad reputation, most bacteria are very helpful - giving us certain foods, digesting what we eat, cleaning up toxic spills, and returning nutrients to our soil. (Above: Salmonella attacking human cells)