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This website opens into a word document that has a TON of different lesson plans for K-1 grade level. The two lesson plans that I really liked were the Adventures in the Rain Forest, and What's the Point of That? The Adventures in the Rain Forrest talked about how living things are dependent on one another, and where they are at in relationship to their environment (the rain forest). The class will embark on a mini pretend field trip to a rain forest where they will discuss where certain things in a rain forest are located, and why it is important. This relates to the standard 12.B.1a really well! The other lesson plan that I really liked in this huge list was the one that was called, "What's the point?" In this lesson plan, the students learn different characteristics of living things and why it is important that they have them. (i.e. the importance of birds having feathers, etc.) I really like this lesson because students will really get a grasp on how all living things are different in a lot of ways, but the reasons behind why they are different. I'm all about celebrating our differences!

Electricity -- we depend on it every minute of every day. And yet to many of us, electricity seems a mysterious and even magical force. Before Ben Franklin did his famous and very dangerous kite flying experiment, electricity was thought to be a type of fire. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I think this is an excellent lesson to teach to grades 3-6. I am pleased with this lesson that it lists the lesson sequence, materials needed, and the objectives. I really like the variety that this lesson includes. It allows students to get up and move in acting out an electric circuit as well as get up close and personal with electricity and how it works with the activity. Not only does this lesson involve interactive components for students, it also provides many videos that correlate with the lesson. This lesson plan seems easy to follow with the instructional sequence and I think it would be easy to fit within the McKendree lesson plan template and add a bit of flair from the teacher candidate. I think this lesson also allows teachers to impose his or her own spin on the lesson and choose what parts to include or omit as well as what might need to be added to the lesson. A lesson like this with so much instructional variety helps to reach students that learn from hands-on activities, students who learn more visually, as well as students who learn best from discussion and instruction. I would follow the instructional sequence if I were to use this lesson in the classroom, but I would tailor it to fit my time allotment for teaching Science, thus it would be done in smaller segments. I would choose one or two videos to share with the class, but post the rest on our class website so the children could view them if the wanted to.

PBS's lesson on gravity is somewhat of a classic, dropping two objects of different weight from the same height. This lesson utilizes both hands-on experiments, videos, prediction, and a variety of other ways for students to stay engaged and involved in the lesson. Throughout the lesson students predict what may or may not happen to their own experiments, to those done on the moon, and comparatively between the two differing atmospheres. The resource is specifically valuable to me due to it's consistent student directed and inquiry-based nature, examples of higher order thinking questions can be found throughout the lesson. I can see this resource being used in the classroom during an introduction lesson to the concept of gravity, possibly taking place in multiple parts throughout a week or a unit.

So, what does a parade and this lesson plan have in common? A lot of waves! People wave in a parade and this lesson is about waves. Get it? Oh well, that's why I'm a science teacher and not a stand-up comic. Anyway, last lesson we talked about vibrations and frequency. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This is a great lesson on waves! I think this particular lesson would be appropriate for 3rd through 8th grade. Of course there are adaptations that may need to be made to ensure that it meets the appropriate grade level needs, but overall, I think it would be an interesting and engaging lesson for many grades. This lesson does not include an exact instructional sequence but it is quite informative and teachers will be able to read through the lesson and choose what he or she wants to say about waves. I really like the funny little tidbits throughout the lesson. I really like that there are many experiments available to demonstrate and experience waves. Also, there is a short assessment at the end of the lesson which I think would be a great formative assessment and might even be a great resource for questions of a future summative assessment. Personally, I would use Plickers or iClickers with the assessment to gauge how well the children grasped the material.

What a fun lesson on paleontology. In this lesson, the teacher will see that it can be cut into three class sessions. You have to make sure to have a good discussion about modelling prior to this lesson. On this page you will find the complete lesson on how to go about introducing fossils to your students. Their are awesome guiding questions and good ideas for how to display this lesson in and to the class. The activity sounds pretty cool as well. Students get to bring in everyday items or things they have at home and use them to mold into a fossil. This will start conversation between them on how each others look and how different items make different fossils.

This is an entire unit on wetlands and it is completely free. There are five lessons on wetlands that each build on one another. I really like how the first lesson relies solely on the student's senses to experience wetlands. There are activities for each of the five senses that really get children engaged and in tune to what a wetland is. The second lesson teaches about different types of wetlands and includes a game to help learn them. Lesson three is great because it pairs this ecology lesson on wetlands with an English lesson on metaphors. It even includes objectives with measurable verbs, There are also great extension activities included! Each lesson in this unit plan has at least one video paired with it. I really like when there are videos provided, because teachers don'e have to use them, but they may if they choose. I would certainly use some of the videos that I thought would help better explain the context of the lesson, so visual and auditory learners would be able to better grasp the content. I could certainly see myself using this lesson in my future classroom. Especially since it is for upper elementary and middle school which are my ideal age group.

This site provides a multitude of lesson plans for many different grade levels of science. Teacher notes, student copies, and examples are all given in the lesson guidelines. I have used Arkive in the past for projects and have found it very helpful. I imagine using these lessons as supplemental activities for the lessons I teach in biology.

This is a cute idea to incorporate visual arts into a science lesson plans. I loved using Crayola lesson plans when I was teaching pre-school. This lesson is cute because it deals with baby animals and the students get to work on fine motor skills as well. Be sure to check out the rest of the website.

This website provides procedures for creating static electricity using a variety of materials. The lesson also provides objectives and suggestions for "gearing up." The procedures are geared towards 6th and 8th graders but I can do the challenging demonstrations and just have my students observe. I like this lesson because it provides a variety of activities to show students how static electricity is made. There are activities provided in this lesson that would be appropriate for elementary students, and I will modify this lesson for my elementary students accordingly.

This site provides everything from objectives to assessment strategies and also lists related books and links for more information.

This website is more for the experiment that you might do after teaching a lesson. This particular experiment is the old fashion "making a volcano". I believe that students can learn from this experiment. There is an objective on the understanding of volcanoes and guiding questions at the end. I would probably do this experiment in the middle of the week for lessons on volcanoes. I would definitely give my students background knowledge on what volcanoes are, how they are formed, and what happens when they erupt. I would then have them do this experiment. After, the website gave a great idea for a homework assignment such as, looking into the volcanoes we have on earth and possibly writing a paper on them. I enjoy experiments, especially in science so I believe this would be great for any lesson involving volcanoes.

This is another lesson I found that would be great for a 5th grade astrology lesson.  This is a complete lesson that has students do research no computers do gather information on the solar system, after they have been through guided discussions.

This link has lesson plans and activities that would useful in learning about food chains. It also has standards, objectives, and rubrics for the teacher to use. I like this link because it will be useful to guide off of for lesson plans, objectives, and activities. You can use the lesson plans and activities, or you can change them for your liking.

This lesson deepens students' understanding of the similarities and differences in the life cycles of organisms. The lesson begins with a reading of Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar Next, students use a video to study the developmental stages of frogs, dragonflies, and butterflies. _____________ This lesson plan grabbed my attention because it begins with a book by Eric Carle and we just discussed his books in one of my other classes at McKendree. This is a two day lesson. The lesson plan begins by gaining the students interested by reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carl. There is a corresponding video which explains the life cycles of frogs, dragonflies, and butterflies. Then, there is an activity to hand out to the class. In groups they follow the activity to explain their assigned organism, then they explain their findings to the class. I like this lesson plan because it is very detailed. I would use this in my class when studying life cycles.

This resource is a lesson plan to help students understand animal diversity. I selected this resource because it gives the lesson plan and it also gives you ideas on how to extend the lesson into future lessons. I would use this lesson during my lesson segment on plant and animal biodiversity to get the students thinking about animal diversity.

This website includes lesson plans and activities to use in conjunction with Weather Channel's classroom program "Elementary Weather". Specifically, it includes weather concepts, scientific method, climate, weather terms, and the water cycle. It gives five lessons with background information, objectives, procedures, outcomes, prep time, materials, and standards. I chose this resource for a number of reasons. It's cross-curricular in at least one other area, provides handouts, has extension and modification plans, includes hands-on lessons, assessment tools, and a long-term project. I see myself using this in the classroom because there are many different directions each lesson can take. Modifications and extensions are important in our districts to meet the needs of diverse learners. I put a $ in the tags in case purchase of the videos is necessary.

This pdf file provides many different lessons on weather for many different grade levels. The pdf file assist the students in understanding the meaning behind the weather as a whole and gives great insight into what students need to do during these weather conditions. I believe that these lesson while give students great insight into how weather works as well as provide the teacher with many different ways to teach the lesson or grade level.

For this activity you would need a glove, 5 cotton balls, and 5 different types of plant seeds. Label the fingers of the gloves, wet the cotton ball but rid the excess water, place one seed and one cotton ball in the correctly labeled finger of the glove and watch the seeds grow. You can plant cotton ball and seed in garden once they sprout. I chose this because I think that kids really enjoy growing their own plants. I have worked with children and done this before and they love to check on them daily and then be able to take home and grow. I also chose this because each individual child gets their own plants and individual participation for fairly inexpensive project. As we begin a lesson on plants, we would plant our own plants to watch them grown throughout the unit. We would also be able to journal about our plants and their changes over time.

This lesson involves watching plants grow from seeds. Students use a glove and place one seed in each of the fingers and thumb. A damp cotton ball is added to hydrate the seeds as they grow. Students can watch their seeds grow into seedlings and eventually transplant elsewhere to become full grown plants. I would add some things to this lesson (such as a daily or weekly journal to document the growth of the seeds). I chose this because during an observation I saw this lesson in action! The students (grade 1) loved it and were excited to see what their seeds were doing each day and excited to know that when the seedlings were big enough, they would be planting them outside their school. It's valuable to me because I think it's important for students to understand the plant cycle and to appreciate the act of growing things (not just trees or flowers, but we can grow our food too!) I would use this lesson with different books to get the students engaged; I would use journals to monitor and make predictions about our seedlings as well.

This site has a lot of resources for lesson plans and worksheets on a variety of topics. For a butterfly unit, I would use the "Introduction to Bugs - What is an Insect?" lesson plan on this page to introduce the unit by explaining that a butterfly is an insect.

This website is a couple of different lesson plans that are centered around diversity in organisms, humans, and plants. I selected this website because there are four specific lessons that go right along with plant and animal biodiversity. I would use this resource when I was making my lesson plans for the lesson segment on plant and animal biodiversity because the lessons will give me a better understanding on what the 2nd graders need to know.

This link takes you into the formation of crystals. It gives you an introduction for your students and gives you guiding questions. This lesson also explains how crystals form, what they are, and ask students where you might find them. Crystals are cool, so I have no doubt that students will love this lesson. Also, at the end there are some hands on activities. I would scroll and click on make bath crystals for the activity because looking into that one, it seems like something the students can do and enjoy in class. After this lesson, I believe students will know more about crystals, where to find them in their everyday objects, and enjoy learning how to make them.

This is a lesson plan resource that covers the explanation of simple machines and a couple activities in which students create their own simple or complex machines. The lesson plan also lists some great books and activity pieces to buy that would go great along with each of the lesson sections and also lists a few ideas for homework materials. The only ones that were working correctly were #3 to see the design of a lapbook and #5 to see simple machine coloring pages. Also note that choice #6 under Homework Ideas does cost money. I personally loved the ideas for creating simple and complex machines. It would be a chance for students to work together on creating a solution (3-5-ETS1-2). This would be a great way to breakdown the learning of simple machines into easy pieces that can be organized and taught well.