Endangered Species by Evynn

        Recently in Science/Tech, we have been working on endangered species folders. Each student gets to choose an endangered animal to do research about. We could either work with a partner or work by yourself. By doing much research, we have to come up with an idea to save the species we chose. The information the students received were printed out and glued on a special folder. The folder is made out of colored construction paper. There are flaps on the outside for the cover and sections on the inside for all of the information we researched. It amazes me on how many animals are endangered to this day. I asked some students on how they feel about people killing innocent animals and the animals that are going extinct because of it. Here are some responses:

“I feel that humans are selfish and that they would kill an animal’s mom just for a meal.” -Aidan

“I feel sad and weird. Mainly sad.” -Mia

“I feel that they are not recognized as they are supposed to be.” -Rachel L.

“I don’t know...I feel terrible. It’s not very nice.” -Braden

“ I feel like most of the reasons are because of Trees and habitats. It's actually really unfortunate that people in the future won't really know some of the animals we have today.” -Mayee

“Sad.” -Melina

“I feel that some that are truly endangered should be monitored”. -AJ

I did my report with Sofia.F on the Pygmy Three-Toed Sloth. It is one of the slowest mammals on earth and they are critically endangered. They have this status because of its separation from mainland species. Their top speed is 0.15 miles per hour. I learned that people can make laws and orders about not killing animals, but others still do it anyways. Some people these days are selfish and do whatever they want. We had to come up with good ideas to keep these animals safe, without people and other things trying to kill them. This project tied in with about all of the Leading Edge pillars. This project not only made us think about other humans, but other animals in need of saving.

 

Brain Investigations by Santiago

Recently in Science and Technology we studied the brain. We got in groups and investigated a part of the brain and tested a question we had about that piece of the brain.

For example, the part of the brain my group did was the Amygdala. The Amygdala is key to processing emotions. In an article we read that your mood affects test scores. We used the scientific method.

First, we designed a hypothesis, our hypothesis was that playing a game before a memory test will improve scores when compared to the scores of the memory test without playing a game. We chose a game, because if you pick a good game that everyone likes, then everyone will have fun and they’ll be in a good mood. Next, we ran our experiments with 6 test subjects. Then, we analyzed our results and found our hypothesis to be correct. Then we repeated the whole thing.

I interviewed some other sixth graders about their team's brain investigations:

“What did you do for your brain-investigation?” -ME

“Sleep stuff, we tested if certain activities before sleep affected how you slept. We used watching youtube videos and reading. We found that reading before sleep is better than watching videos.” -Savun

“What did you do for the Brain-Investigation?” -ME

“Memory between males and females. So we had them each take memory tests.” -Ethan

“What did you find?” -ME

“Overall Females had a better memory than males.” -Daniel [who worked with Ethan]