Science Education Idea Exchange

I used this to create class projects that students are assigned different pieces of a larger topic. This is an easy way to share out what they have found. It can easily be adapted to PowerPoint as well. I have a quick video with an example below.

I found this awesome activity here and modified it for my classroom. It is one of my favorite ways to review because it requires so little to prepare and one material while engaging the whole class. I change the rules a little to allow the person who starts with, in my case a red blood cell, to choose what direction they want to pass it around the circle. Since I teach middle school, I make it a little more competitive by having the person up sit down if they don't answer the question in time. We play until there are only two left! (To engage those sitting down, I ask them to come up with review questions by looking through their books, notes, and study guides.)

I am amazed that I did not discover this earlier: there are many free graphics you can use to spice up your worksheets and lessons! To find them, use a search term, select "free", and "clipart". You might be surprised at what you can find. Some of my favorites are listed here. Please check them out! Creative Clips Science Girl Lessons Empty Jar Illustrations Just Draw Clipart ThinkingCaterpillars

I cannot take credit for this, but I learned in a seminar about 3D learning a way to write "I can" statements for students using the NGSS language. It is a pretty slick formula! I can  SEP  about  DCI  BY  CC . Science and engineering practices are almost the "why" we do it. The disciplinary core ideas are what we are learning. Finally, the crosscutting concepts are how we learn about the scientific concept. I put these into my lesson plans, in my slides, and in student note packets/worksheets. (Administrators love it!)

I have created another lesson plan bundle on my Teachers Pay Teachers for the NGSS standard  MS-LS1-4 . The preview of some of the table of contents is shown below. In the bundle, I have included stations and a note sheet for your students to record what they have learned. Toward the end, there is a simulation game that your students will examine herding behavior in white-tail deer. There are a couple opportunities for assessment of understanding. Original deer made by Empty Jar Illustrations

Since I have been creating materials for my Teachers Pay Teachers, I have been on the lookout for amazing pictures and graphics. Unsplash  is a free website that you can use the images in your classroom or items you sell online. There are sooo many talented artists! Down below is just one example. Photo by  Alexander Andrews  on  Unsplash

I am excited to announce that I will be hosting a sale on my Teachers Pay Teachers site! On Monday and Tuesday, all of my products will be 10% off! Here are a couple new products that I have added within the last week that will be included: https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Self-Care-Puzzle-Escape-Room-5498046 https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Early-Elementary-Animal-Scavenger-Hunt-5483036

Grammarly  turned out to be a useful tool. I was skeptical because of all of the advertisements. It was a student that convinced me to give it a try. I appreciated it most when drafting school emails to parents. I always want to be professional. It allowed me to do so by flagging things I should check in my writing and providing feedback on my tone. It can also be added to Safari!

I love TabCloud! Summary : Chrome Extension that will save and name your webpages. I am the type of person that will have several tabs open as I work on projects. Rarely do I finish the project before I need to walk away from my computer. By using TabCloud, I was able to easily save all the pages I had open before I leave. I could even have groups of tabs from different projects saved. For example, I am working on my STEM class. I would have a STEM Tab Cloud. I would also be working on 7th grade science. My second TabCloud would be cells. You get the idea.

I love to walk around my Classroom as I provide instruction. I learned early on that this was important to minimizing off-task behaviors. There are a couple tools available on the market that work with your slides presentations. One popular tool is Pear Deck . I'll be honest and say that I'm not as big of a fan. I know there are benefits by being able to add questions for students to respond to and controlling their screens. I just found it time consuming for my purposes. Instead, I use the Google Chrome Extension Remote for Slides. It's a very simple tool that allows you to use your phone or tablet to progress through the Slides as you walk around your classroom. Basically, it allows you to have a remote. If you're interested, search the Chrome Store and they have a video walking you through what it looks like.

Summary: Create videos that students watch and are asked questions as they view the video. Advantages:  EdPuzzle communicates with Google Classroom and can be assigned to students through it.  Students can watch videos at their own pace.  The video will pause if the students click off the screen. There are several videos already created by other teachers that you can modify and save to fit your needs. Helps with e-Learning since you can create an interactive lesson for your students. Collaborating with other teachers in your building is easy. Disadvantages: I have not figured out how to record their scores for the videos, if that is something you are interested in. Use: 1. Create your account and search for videos on whatever topic you're interested in. (You can also upload your own video to start from scratch.) 2. When you select a video, you have the option to edit, copy, assign, or share. Editing- allows you to modify the video to your needs ...

Book Creator  is a free website for teachers to use with their students. Summary : Create digital books for projects by sharing a code to join the teacher's online library. Strengths: It's free and intuitive. Rarely did students have questions on how to use the website. Limitations : There are limited numbers of books that you can make. It was not enough for me to have  every student make a book. I offered it as an option to create projects. Set-up: 1. Sign in. 2. Share the code with students. Students will be prompted to choose a book format. From there, they can add pictures, text, and backgrounds.

A few years ago, I heard a speaker talk about the importance of class culture by using humor. I implemented brain breaks that year and it was a hit! There are a couple options: 1. GoNoodle 2. YouTube Videos GoNoodle is a fun website that offers free videos to get students up and moving or calm and relaxed. My students did not get into it too much because I think they felt they were too cool to dance around. But, maybe you can get it to work for your classroom. My brain breaks evolved into silly YouTube videos. I started off the year with a few that I found and eventually, my students were submitting videos. It was a moment of pride when their video was viewed in class. Students talked about our brain breaks on evaluation forms, with their parents, and with their peers. It was a big hit! By having students submit videos, I was able to preview them and create a list for later use. I would remind students that videos could not contain anything with foul language, racist, religio...

I created lesson plans for the MS-LS1-3  on my Teachers Pay Teachers. I start the objective off with a couple phenomenon over things I think students will find to be crazy: regeneration and beating heart cells. My hope is that both will help students to make connections between cells and the body systems they create. The lesson plans continue on with a web quest (answer key is provided to teachers) to help students learn the terminology and examples of each of the levels of organization. Finally, there are two assessments to check student understanding. The first is called a critical thinking question. I ask an open-ended question that students can research. The question is not easy enough that they can simply Google the answer. They have to formulate a response based on what we learned in class and what they can find online.  The second assessment is a project completed over an assigned disease or disorder. Students find it fascinating to talk about what can go wrong w...

I am a terrible drawer. I have no skill and my students get a kick out of my attempts. That's when our school's librarian came to the rescue. AutoDraw  is a website that you do your best on the screen and it predicts what you're attempting to draw. For example, I attempted to draw a beautiful dog. At the top of the screen, you can see its automated guesses. When you click on the guess, it updates your image. You can change the color, add text, and add more than one drawing to the screen. Even better still, you can download your drawings as a PNG file.

If you have not heard of Screencastify, you're in for a treat! Summary : Screencastify allows to record your voice, computer screen, and face while making free videos that upload to your Google Drive. You can add it to your Google Chrome by searching the App Store. There's a little bit of set-up before your initial use. Go through step-by-step to get started. Use: You can jump past the first minute if you do not need help going through the permissions.

I am proud to announce that I have created lesson plans over the NGSS standards for middle school life science on Molecules to Organisms for 7th grade. You can find the lesson plans for the substring one and two here. To provide you with an idea of what in includes, I have screenshots of some of the table of contents for the two of them. For MS-LS1-1, I included a lab where students try to create a working definition of life. This is hard for students. There are resources to help guide them toward it while looking at examples of living and nonliving things. MS-LS1-1  MS-LS1-2 includes a lab that my students have really enjoyed as well as readings to help build their understanding of cells. Students will create a cell analogy to further demonstrate their understanding of cell structures and functions. MS-LS1-2 Both include a critical thinking question to assess student understanding over the standard. I have allowed my students to research the question to help formu...

As mentioned in a  previous post, I love making breakout /puzzle/escape rooms.  I have an example here that you can make a copy of and change, if you'd like. Here's how you can make a digital breakout box using Google Forms: 1. Click on the cog in the upper right-hand corner. 2. Click the third tab labeled "Quizzes" and flip the slider to the right to "make this a quiz" and click save. 3. Title your Form. 4. Create your first question by typing "3 Digit Code". It should change it to a "short answer" question, but if it does not, choose that option from the drop down menu. Make this a "required" question by moving the slider to the right. 5. From the three dots at the bottom right hand corner, select "description" and "response validation". 6. In the description box, provide instructions to how the answer should be typed. 7. Under the "response validation", ...

Quizziz  is another free teacher resource for review. It's great because it has a bank of questions written by other teachers that you can tap into. I created many review games for students and posted them on Google Classroom within minutes. There are three ways to run Quizziz that your students will enjoy, two that can be completed individually and one as a class. To "Play Live" means that you display a code and your students compete against each other while they are seated together. Unlike Kahoot, you do not have to wait until everyone is logged in to begin. It rates students individually on speed and accuracy as they complete the game. "Assign HW" is what you will want to choose to place it on your Google Classroom for students to complete individually. After you choose "Assign HW', you will see the following screen below. 1. Choose a date far enough in the future to allow students to complete the Quizziz. I usually gave them this as...

I absolutely love creating content! Since I'm finding myself at home with some extra time on my hands, I have decided to create a Teachers Pay Teachers account that can be found clicking here . I am pretty excited. I am going to try to be more faithful about updating my blog with resources I find and to share with you current projects I have in the works. Since we are all at home, I have been creating some escape/breakout/puzzle rooms by request for my friend's children. So far, I have a Lego, birthday, Star Wars, and Disney themed games. If you are interested in a specific puzzle room idea, let me know in the comments below and I will give you free access to a copy before I post it on my store. I appreciate the help generating ideas and enjoy creating them to help get kids engaged. I have also created some very basic clip art. Maybe not the most amazing things you've seen, but once again, I had fun. If you go to my store, you can download ones like below for fre...