Science Education Idea Exchange

Blooket feels like Quizziz in that you can assign or host a game. There are libraries of games already created, or you can create our review questions for students. What makes it stand out is there are different game mode options to keep it novel for students.  Sign up for free and start creating your review games.

 I have been busy, but it took me awhile before I posted some new products. Here they are: Christmas Escape Puzzle Room Celebrate Christmas and the winter in style! This escaped room is designed with four different codes (numerical, letter, and directional) hidden in puzzles and visual clues that lead to matching Christmas presents with their missing tags. The students are told they are Santa's elves on Christmas Eve. Bundles Autumn Holiday Escape Puzzle Rooms: Halloween & Thanksgiving Cells & Genetics Escape Puzzle Rooms Rock and Rock Cycle Note Sheet The rocks note sheet has key terms for a unit on rocks, types of rocks (metamorphic, igneous, and sedimentary), and the rock cycle. Pair this with your favorite reading, presentation, or video for students to summarize the key terms and concepts. (Background information is not included.) Who am I? Plate Tectonics Vocabulary Game The classic "Who Am I?" game has 22 cards that cover vocabulary terms associated with pl...

 I am working on completing activities for all of the NGSS PS1 standards, so stay tuned! For now, here is a new one that I created: MS-PS1-4: Phase Change Models for States of Matter S tudents create a model drawing of phase changes for a pure chemical. There are two templates to make the states of matter models. It can be printed or designed into a slide presentation (instructions included). This activity assumes they already know about atoms, states of matter, and thermal energy. The activity included is no-prep. Simply upload or print the materials and go! Included are: Teacher's guide with suggested chemicals and chemical boiling/melting points (secured PDFs) Graphing Model Template and instructions (secured PDF) Drawing Model Template and instructions (secured PDF) Standards/Objectives: ✅NGSS: MS-PS1-4 In the life science camp, I ha ve my  Genetics Vocabulary Note Sheet . The genetics note sheet has key terms for beginning a heredity unit. Students color and label informa...

Available as of April, a new puzzle room to help review forces and motions. I included graphs students need to read to find the velocity of an object. There are practice calculations for speed and acceleration. Discussions of Newton's Laws of Motion. You can see samples of what's included above.   

 One of the struggles for reviewing material is to make it engaging. A coworker of mine taught me about "Grudge Match" and it was a huge success. Photo by  傅甬 华  on  Unsplash Materials needed: notebooks/whiteboards/tablets for students to write and display their answers scoreboard that can be erased bank of questions stacking blocks, like Jenga (or some other silly trick for students to do) Objective: The team with the highest final score wins! How to play: 1. Break students up into small teams of about four students and assign team names. 2. Write the team names on the scoreboard with five hash marks for each team. 3. Instruct students that they are not allowed to consult one another on answers and must write their answers silently on their notebook/whiteboard/tablet or the team will be disqualified from the round. 4. Ask the first question and tell students to put their answers facedown until you ask them to reveal their answers. When they are all ready, every stud...

 I would occasionally find use Google Forms to differentiate assessment or provide choices for students. For Example, growing up I love the "Choose Your Own Adventure" books and have created some for my students. Creating a branching Google Form allows you to do that. Here are instructions on how to do so: 1. Have your information already created for the branching Form and open a blank Google Form. 2. Type your first question in and offer two or more solutions for the students to pick form.  3. Click the three dots at the bottom of the question and select "Go to section based on answer". 4. Click on the button that looks like an equals sign twice to add two new sections that will correspond to your question number one answer. 5. Next to your original question answers, there is an option to direct the students to a specific section based on their answer.  6. For each answer, select the correct section students should be directed to from their answer. 7. Add a questio...

I loved playing "I have, Who Has?" with my students because it is a good vocabulary/concept review tool that involves the whole class listening and engaging at the same time. One student starts off by reading a card that describes a card another student has in their hand. When done properly, the last card reads something like, "I have the last card." To make it interesting, we would see which class period could get it done the fastest, or if they could break their own record. Who doesn't love a little competition? Photo by  Marcel Strauß  on  Unsplash I found premade and free templates on Teachers Pay Teachers, like this one .

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.)

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...

As a PLC, we have created resources for students to use to practice at home in preparation for tests. The first one is Quizlet . The account is free for teachers to sign up and students do not need a login. It's great for vocabulary practice. Things your students can do with Quizlet: Take practice tests and receive immediate feedback on performance Play Scatter: version of memory where the student matches definitions to the term while a timer goes Play Gravity: answer questions before an asteroid hits the planet Flashcards: digital versions of flashcards that can include pictures and pronunciations, if you choose to add them The second is a newer option to my school district. We have begun GAFE training for our students and one of the apps you can use is Google Forms. Google Forms is great for working like a review guide because students can practice both vocabulary , labeling and processes . We have it set up so students can use a Form as many times as they desire....

There are times when a teacher finds a couple minutes are left at the end of class. There's not enough time to start on something new, like tomorrow's lesson. These precious minutes should never go to waste. There are a couple games I have learned and invented to engage my students in review of our science material. Sparkle (or Crystalline Reflection) : This was a game that my students knew from language arts to practice spelling. I adapted it to fit a science classroom. I have the whole class stand up and I will ask students to spell out the answer to the question I pose. Going down the row of students, one at a time, each provides the next letter to spell the answer. If someone says the incorrect letter, they sit down and the next student restarts the word. Once the answer has been spelled out, the next student declares "sparkle" and the student after them has to sit down. Last Scientist Standing : Similar to Sparkle, I pose a question to a student. If they ...

I had a co-worker ask today about resources for reviewing as a class.  That got me thinking about a couple resources that I downloaded years ago, but was not sure what I would find today, so I started to search. Here is what I found out: Murray County Schools Power Point Games PowerPoint Games - UNCW Internet4Classrooms Be a Gameshow Host These are just a few of the many!

Last year, I observed a classroom using Kahoot!  It is a free game reminiscent of when you play trivia against others at sports bars. You can create your own Kahoot games or find pre made games. It works like this: you create questions (or find a game) that can have up to four answers with pictures. When your game is created, you launch it and give your students the game code. They create a nickname to play that doesn't require them to create an account. Once the game starts, you need to be able to project the question and the students can answer on their smart devices or computers. My students absolutely love it! In fact, some of them have started writing their own review games and sharing them with me. Feel free to check out my science and math Kahoot games! My user name is tmschield.

I discovered Plickers  after an observation of a classroom last year. I have used clickers in my classroom, but have issues with batteries and can only retrieve reports after we are done reviewing. Plickers uses a picture that can be scanned by a smart device. Depending on how the student orients their paper, they can have up to four different choices. Plickers is a free resource that you can create classes, question banks, and reports that show student percentages as well as question percentages. I use it for review. It offers real time data so you can see how your students are doing as you pose the question. I am all about free resources!

My husband and I love playing the game from the App store called "Stack the Countries".  Since my seventh graders are getting ready to start the human body. My unit is severely lacking, so I decided to create an adaptation of "Stack the Countries" called "Stack the Organs".  Students will answer questions about the organs such as: What organ system does it belong to? What does it do? What organs is it near? or Where in the body is it located? When students successfully answer the question, they earn the organ and have to stack them so they reach a certain point.  If I had a magnetic whiteboard, I would adhere magnets to the back of my organs and draw a line on the whiteboard for the students to try to pass.  The organs must be touching for it to count. I cut most of the organs out using templates I printed off from this  website .  It was hard to find all of the organs I wanted to scale, so I did the best that I could with the missing o...