o, you’re looking for examples of balanced and unbalanced forces lessons and activities for your classroom. I'm here to help!
Every time I spend seven hours in a professional development workshop it changes my teaching for at least a week. I guess I need frequent reminders that human beings are not meant to sit in a hard chair for seven hours with occasional restroom breaks and a 30-min. lunch break. It's interesting that when we are in the role of students, we call it a good day when there's lots of opportunity for movement, group work, and a little fun in our work, but we don't provide those things for our students as often as we should. I love doing gallery strolls and using task cards to get students up and moving. I'll try just about anything to get kids out of those terrible hard seats for a while. I'm super excited about the potential for learning with movement in the recent phenomenon of Escape Rooms. It's a perfect time to try one yourself! The basic idea is that student teams work together to compete against other teams to be first to finish a series of tasks, each of which gives them clues they need to complete the next task leading to a final opportunity to use every clue for the last task and the escape! When kids have spent all day taking tests they will really appreciate and enjoy a chance to chat, laugh, and move around in a "gamified" activity. And if year-end testing is over, then an Escape Room is a perfect way to combat the "we can stop learning now" attitude we often see in middle school kids in the final few weeks of school. I'm happy to introduce my first Escape Room, and hope that the topic - Biomes - will be a perfect theme for this time of year in your class! An InLinkz Link-up
Interactive notebooks have been one of the biggest trends in education over the last few years, but are something I’ve never been able to buy into. I've
The Jigsaw Strategy is a collaborative learning strategy that works well for teaching Trends in the Periodic table. Learn how to implement this strategy in your general science or chemistry classrooms.
I have a confession to make. During my years in the science classroom, I was never able to sustain a long-term warm-up or bell-ringer routine with my
Engage learners in grade 4, 5, 6 or 7 in learning about Newton's laws of motion and force through hands on demonstrations and laboratory activities meant to encompass all learning styles.
15 exit ticket ideas for any subject or grade level!
Virtual dissections can be a huge help in teaching science, biology, physiology and anatomy. Here are some of the best resources for your lessons and labs.
This single classroom procedure has made a HUGE difference in my experience teaching middle school. My first year teaching I didn't do this and I knew that something needed to change. I decided to put into a place a daily bellringer for every one of my classes. I am a Family Consumer Sciences teacher so I teacher 4 different classes!You can call it whatever you want to call it but I call it a bell ringer because my students are expected to be doing it as soon as the bell rings to start class.Her
Home page for ALL's free teaching resources on underage drinking and its effects on the brain, including primers, curriculum plans, and videos.
Share with your friends!4 3 The demand for STEM careers continues to grow in the Technology Age. Yet, companies struggle to find qualified engineers and scientists to fill the jobs openings. I decided to research why there isn’t a pipeline of engineers for the available jobs, and found that kids lose interest in STEM careers around middle […]
It’s almost time for back to school! Get to know your students and help students start thinking about science in their own lives. This free resource, Science About Me, is a simple and fun activity for students to complete the first week of school. What’s included? Suggested Use page Full page printable Notebook-sized printable Who ... Read more
Hands-on learning isn't just for younger students! These hands-on activities for middle and high schoolers will help older students enjoy learning and stay actively engaged in the process.
Looking to plan a comprehensive cells unit for your middle school class? Get all the worksheets, presentations, quizzes and tests you need in PDF format!
What if your next unit were self-grading and had students clamoring to work ahead? Yep, you read that right. Your next unit, whether it's skills or facts, could be presented to students in a visible trail of learning that compels them to keep moving forward. In fact, in our classroom, we're doing a game board system for GRAMMAR, and students are doing above the minimum to compete, succeed, and be creative. I've been slowly improving this system for five years in my classroom, and it has manifested into a really cool grammar program for my seventh and eighth graders. Now, I'm finally ready to share it with you. What madness is this? As any quick Google or Edutopia search will tell you, game-based learning is hot right now. A lot of people are looking at different styles of gaming to think about how we can hack the brain's motivation, reward, and learning cycles to help our students make engaged progress. My take on gaming is a basic one, at least for now, but it works. The game board I created is basically the full cycle of learning in disguise: introduce new information, practice, formative assessment, respond to assessment, and repeat... until a final summative assessment happens at the end of the unit or academic term. ...But when presented in the game board, suddenly all this learning isn't just a pile of work anymore - it's a compelling trail that makes students say things like "Challenge accepted!" Example 1: Grammar When I teach The Grammar House Cup, students follow a learning sequence for each grammar topic, gathering "points" for their houses along the way. (Learn more in this blog post.) Example 2: Essay Writing What if you sequenced your "game board" to teach all the parts of an essay, alternating between instruction and writing? The game board could have built-in checkpoints so that you are giving rough draft feedback (OR actually grading the essay pieces) as you go! It also opens up self-paced learning and a writing workshop format. Get the EDITABLE templates! I hope you've been inspired to think of options for how you could reframe or reformat your teaching and learning sequence! Check out my game board download on Teachers Pay Teachers if you want to try a game board program out for yourself! What do you think of this game board madness? Tell me in the comments below!
10 inexpensive rewards to use in your middle school class.
Read on to get some great ideas for project-based learning in your middle school classroom!
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Looking for a way to get students to have fun learning new words AND remember them longer? Try these brain-based vocabulary activities.
This is one lab that you don’t want to miss! It’s easy, the materials are inexpensive (you probably already have them at home), and it ties together multiple concepts. Winner!In this lab, students will analyze a pedigree of a fictitious family. In the introduction, students read that “Jon and Sue Smith” were in a car ... Read more
Are you taking the leap into the wild and wonderful world of teaching elementary science? Congratulations! 🎉 From making science notebooks your best friend to transforming your classroom into a curiosity-filled lab (minus the lab rats), we’ve got tips and tricks that even Albert Einstein would high five us for! Ready to become the next superhero ... Read more
Microscopes. My students used to love microscope lab days. Who doesn't like seeing cool stuff like human skin cells, dog hair and pond scum magnified before their eyes? Before I let them loose with the expensive instruments, however, I make them learn the parts and what they do. That's where this came in handy... I love color-coded mapping activities. I think the process of identifying the part and coloring it can help our more visual and kinesthetic learners retain the information. I also have another version. This allows students to label and color the microscope themselves. It also allows for differences in vocabulary. For example, you may use the term objective lens instead of objective in your classroom. I always have them circle the label with the color of the part. Sometimes I have them list the function alongside the label. If this activity would be a help in your classroom, you can find it here. I also have other mapping activities available here.
