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Showing posts with the label critical thinking

Metric System Lesson Plans

Start off the school year right! These lesson plans include answers, handouts to help convert the metric system, practice problems, and a student-choice project. The project at the end has suggestions for differentiation, and all students create some product to demonstrate they understand unit conversions. Click the link above to see the new product. This product includes the following activities: ⚪Pennies, Dimes & Dollars ⚪Metric System Problems ⚪Conversion Practice Project   https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Metric-System-Lesson-Plans-11856800 I have bundled it as well with my Density and Water Lab so you can save 30%. Click here to see it.

Creativity

 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.

Cellular Respiration Lesson Plans

I am sorry that it's been a while since my last post. We are in the process of moving and I have a little. It's busy! I finished my lesson plans on cellular respiration for NGSS in middle school. You can check it out here . The lesson plan bundle includes a couple labs, graphic organizers, and activities to help students understand the function of cellular respiration.

NGSS Structure and Function of Living Things

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...