What's up in S-8 this year?

On our way back down from Sacramento, Kyle and I brought our fish tank back home from its extended stay at Ryan and Erin's house. We decided to put it in my classroom since there's no space for it in our apartment (much to the disappointment of the kitties!)

I was surprised how excited my students were to have a new addition to the classroom! It has now become a competition amongst my classes as to who gets to name the fishies. I told each class that they could name one if everyone had their homework in on time (a challenge for my freshmen). I said this jokingly thinking that they could care less about naming some fish, but apparently they feel that they will become famous if they get to name the most fish or something because it has become quite the motivation for them! So far we have two fish that are due to be named (we have to have a class vote before the final name is chosen). This is very serious stuff! So far we have the two tetras that Ry and Erin bought and I added two dalmation mollies, and some red and black platys. I love having mollies and platys because they have live babies. My students are really excited about this as well and keep asking if they can take the babies home (I don't have the heart to tell them that I only bought females).

While I had my camera at school I thought I'd take some pics of my setup this year...

 

Here are a couple of my students working on their "Seasons" experiment. We are studying Ecology and climate right now. (They're testing to see how the temperature at the equator and the poles of the planet changes as you change the tilt of the Earth's axis by shining a heat lamp on a globe with thermometers placed in several places on "Earth")