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This is the home page for the 7A classroom and Mr. Ritscher. Feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns at mritscher@holyrosaryws.org

As a STEM school, we place a high importance on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. I try to include these topics and how they overlap and reinforce each other in science.  In every unit I teach I explain what engineering careers tie in to the specific area of science we are learning about. We also spend time doing hands on experimentation as we experience what an engineer would do.

The outline of the science curriculum for the year looks like this:

7th- We will do units on Flight, Simple Machines, Electricity, Weather, Sound, Light, Scientific Method, Genetics, Health, Ecology, and Plants.

8th- Units will include Solutions, Engineering and Architecture, Geology, Astronomy, Forces, Scientific Method, Classification and Simple Kingdoms, Invertebrates, Health and Anatomy. We also tend an organic garden and learn from that.

Lastly for those of you that want a brief synopsis of my philosophy for teaching science, I find it helpful to think of 5 “E’s”.

Engagement- I try to hook the kids onto the topic through some demonstration or other intro.

Exploration- We do some kind of hands-on lab to explore more.

Explanation- I sum up what I wanted them to learn from the lab in note form.

Elaboration- We do some other assignment where we use the new-found knowledge.

Evaluation- I test them on the material

This is not a rigid structure; some topics lend themselves better to this approach than others but this is the rhythm I’m shooting for.