Folly Quarter's Mystery Class Project

A Journey North Project

As the days grow longer this winter, FQMS' 6th grade science classes will be using this change in daylight to compile and analyze data. Along the way, they will use that data to determine the location of mystery cities around the globe. This project is in collaboration with hundreds of other schools around the world and will give our students the opportunity to share data with other middle school students to solve the puzzle.

This Mystery Class project will allow our students to use and synthesize content information that they have learned this year in their science, social studies, and math classes. Their knowledge of latitude and longitude will be tested and put into use on a weekly basis. They will need graph the data they collect as they have learned previously in math class. And they will need to use this data which they have collected to understand what the changing daylight hours says about our Earth-Sun system of rotation and revolution.

The 6th graders at Folly Quarter Middle School will complete this project in conjunction not only with their science teachers but also the Media Specialist, Heather Staines, and our prinicpal, Rick Wilson. These two people are playing an integral role in our project, with the Media Specialist allowing us to reserve computers on Mondays and Fridays and our principal supporting our collaborative effort between classrooms here at FQMS and classrooms around the world. Without them, this project would not be possible.

How To Register:

Visit Journey North: Mystery Class to register. 

Project Timeframe:

Mystery Class game begins on Monday, January 31, 2011.

Contest entries are due Friday, April 29, 2011.

Mystery Site Locations are revealed Friday, May 6th, 2011.

Participants @ Folly Quarter:

Science Objectives:

• HC.06.03.02.d: Explain the effect of latitude on climate.
• HC.06.03.02.e: Recognize and describe how the tilt of the Earth's axis affects climate in Maryland.
• HC.SP.15.g: Use mathematics to interpret and communicate data.
• HC.06.04.03.g: TSW compare the movements of the planets of the solar system and explain the environmental differences that results from them (length of day and year, seasons, tidal forces)
• HC.06.04.03.a: TSW identify and describe the relationships among the period of revolution of a planet, the length of its solar year, and its distance from the sun.
• HC.06.04.03.b: TSW identify and explain the relationship between the rotation of a planet or moon on its axis and the length of the solar day for that celestial object.

Social Studies Objectives:

• 650.05: Explain selected geographic terms and concepts associated with maps and their necessary components.
• 650.06: Construct and interpret information, solve puzzles, and recognize associations using maps, globes and other geographical resources.
• 650.08: Describe how the Earth's rotation causes nigh and day.

Math Objectives:

• Goal 2. The student will locate points on a number line and in a coordinate plane.
• Goal 5. The  student will analyze linear relationships.

Resources Needed:

Hardware: Student set of computers--either mobile or lab setting.

Contacts:

Sherri Morisco, 6th Grade Teacher.

Kirsten Willging, 6th Grade Teacher.

Heather Staines, Media Specialist.

Rick Wilson, Principal.