Science Education Idea Exchange

I am a huge fan of project-based learning! As a result, I create lots of rubrics. Sometimes I write them myself and other times, I like to find premade ones to help me clarify the assessment piece. A co-worker in Colorado introduced me to Rubistar  years back. It's free and pretty user-friendly. They have several premade categories and criteria, but you can alter them to fit your needs. The website is old, but don't let that throw you off.

 I love to create breakout rooms for my students (as you may have noticed from my Teachers Pay Teachers page). To create your own: To get me started, I have used the template from Breakout.edu . I just discovered they have many more resources. To find pre-created resources: Search Facebook for groups- I belong to a science group that is no longer active, but you can still find resources for free Breakout.edu- requires paid membership after 14 days Teachers Pay Teachers Others? Share in the comments below

 I am currently working on writing lesson plans for MS-LS2-4. I decided to offer a lab I created for the lesson plans as a stand-alone. You can find it here !

After months of work, I finally completed another lesson plan bundle with the idea of project-based learning and engineering in mind.  Check it out !

I recently completed a class on Learner's Edge . The class was over the STEM Shift. The price was right and the class flexible. I earned college credit for $200 less than other options I found online. I highly recommend it if you need extra CEUs, like I did. Other and free online resources I have found are through: EdPuzzle (under "Resources") Learning for Justice What tools do you use to earn CEUs?

 I watched and was inspired the other day by The Creative Brain  on Netflix. There were so many tidbits on how to innovate and how all people can be creators. As a science teacher, I have been trying to encourage my students to create new inventions. Some takeaways I have to share with you are: 1. Create journals full of pictures and lists of things you come across every day. This could be done in a classroom between students to inspire one another or lists of phenomena. 2. Create a hybrid. Why not mesh two existing designs together to see what happens? 3. Make a twist.  We mistakenly think that things have to be brand new to be inventive. Take an existing invention and add a slight twist to it.

I know that my students always found making graphs daunting, so I created a free cheat sheet that can be downloaded at my store. It includes basic descriptions of how graphs are set up and explanations of the use of four common graphs. I would love to hear your thoughts on this resource so I can improve it. 😊