Group items tagged

This is a link to the US Geological Service's website. The education portion is really neat. Since i have met my boyfriend, he is a miner, I have become more and more interested in rocks and the earth. This webpage makes it easy to find what you need. Their resources are broken down into categories (K-6, 7-12, and undergraduate). The best part about this is there is a place to look at 3-D pictures of major landmarks. You would need your own glasses, but I think if these were projected on a smartboard, it would be a great way to show students what Mother Nature can accomplish.

"Hand rolled soap has been made for centuries, and is easier to make than you think! Your child can learn more about the history of soap as well as rolling up some soap the whole family can use for getting clean. Soap has been around for thousands of years, first referenced in the second century AD!" We all want to be clean! But what is soap made of and what science aspects does soap bring to the table? This experiment is a perfect introduction and leading question to get students engaged. The child will add their own uniqueness to their individual soaps and the flexibility to be creative. They will also learn science concepts of liquid turning into solid and states of matter exploration. If the students are anything like me-they will be intrigued!

This activity will allow students to produce a "marketable" product made from minerals in a product that many people use daily. Students will make their own toothpaste using the minerals, calcium carbonate and sodium bicarbonate. Students get to test their product against the basic toothpaste that many people use. The activity and lesson familiarize students will the natural compounds that are used to make many everyday things. Students will see that the combination of these two minerals makes something profitable. Students can also compare the prices of toothpastes to integrate math and to learn about the economy. The activity can be used when we are learning about minerals and natural resources, geoscience, or how communities use science.

This is a brief explanation on why the sky is blue followed by an activity. I chose this source because I have always wanted to know the definitive answer to the question: Why is the sky blue? I would use this in an older elementary classroom as a lesson followed by a lab activity.

This is an activity illustrating how the tiny particles of the ringed planets can be seen so far away despite their small size. I chose this activity because I liked it, and because I liked that it had a discussion after its completion. I imagine my class will complete this activity and then we will discuss our findings as a whole group.

This animation reviews the electron transport chain in simple visually supplemented steps. It is also a wonderful tool to provide to students to review content at home.

This website is full of different hands on activities for teaching biology to high school or middle school students. All of the activities that are provided are closely linked to biological concepts. The reason why I selected this resource is because I feel that students will truly understand and be able to apply a biological concept if they are able to engage said concept in a hands on activity. It is important that the kinesthetic mode of learning is addressed in class. This resource is valuable because I truly believe that the more hands-on activities that I have in my classroom, the more effective of a science classroom it will be. I will undoubtedly use some of these activities in my own class.  

This is a hands-on activity that allows students to grasp the idea of how far the planets are from each other and from the sun. The activity starts by having the students perform simply mathematics to convert the distance in astronomical units to centimeters. I really like that the students have to perform this task themselves and that it incorporates mathematics into the science lesson. After determining each planets distance from the sun, the students use color beads on a string to show each planets distance from the sun.

Love the science/math integration!

This activity would be a great way to get the students more involved with being outside, and would be a fun way to study nature! Take a nature walk in your backyard or local park to find one object for every letter of the alphabet. Then put them together in this handy nature book. In the notebook, I would have the students tape or glue the object in their book, and research information about the object and write a description about it. When the nature book was due, I would have my students share with the class what they found. This lesson would work on their science, reading, communication, and writing skills.

This interactive activity assist students in understanding the main parts of the plant cell. The students have to assist the conductor by getting the train to the right part of the plant cell, which provides memorization and practice skills for the student. This resource is valuable because it provides a lesson about the plant cell and how the plant cell parts work and what they are. I see my students using this resource as a fun way to study for their assessment, it's a wonderful memorization material.

This is a game that requires students to identify simple machines around the house and compound machines in the shed. Once students select one of the objects, they are given two multiple choice questions about the use of the tool and then what type of simple machine is being used. Then the students are given a visual aid explaining the job of that simple or compound machine. I chose this interactive website because it gives students real life application as it shows everyday uses for simple machines. I would use this in the classroom during a lesson on simple machines so that the students would benefit more from connecting the simple machines to previous experiences.

Simple Machines is a science game for students in grades 2 - 6 to identify simple machines around the house, and simple machines that make up compound machines in the tool shed. This is a very interactive activity. I chose this because it is informative and interactive as well as a free resource. I love that there is a free teacher's guide available and the national standards are listed so that you can see where this activity falls in the standards. I think this would be a great tool to use throughout the chapter or lesson on simple and compound machines. This will help reinforce the concept.

Make these homemade shell fossils and introduce your child to the wonders of science! This activity would be a great way to end a unit on fossil imprints. This activity would allow the students to understand how fossils can be made, even if it isn't authentic. The experiment would keep the students interested and would gain their attention. I would allow my students to find objects that have great texture, and allow them to press down in the clay to see how it looks after it hardens. Once the clay hardened, I would hang them up on the wall for my students to be able to look at them.

This is such a fun end-of-the week activity for teaching the various states of matter with yummy root beer floats. The teacher and students review liquid as they look at just the root beer in the cups. Then they review solids, as they add the ice cream. Finally, they observe gas when the ice cream is added to the root beer. I would definitely do this activity in my classroom. It is all about making science applicable to everyday life, and rewarding your students in the process!

With this activity, you start by having just the root beer sitting in cups at each student's desk. Discuss with the class why the matter in the cup is a liquid. Then move onto showing the students ice cream and ask what makes it a solid. Next add the ice cream to the root beer and discuss how the carbonation of the soda makes the root beer fizz which is the gas. This would be used at the end of a unit on solids, liquids and gas as a reward and fun activity to review the previous week's lessons. I chose this activity to show the students how they can see and apply science in their everyday life. This activity was free but there are lessons and units linked to this activity that cost money.

This lesson is used to teach young students the importance of nature. Many students don't realize many manufactured items come from nature. Bring in everyday items from home and ask the children where they think the item came from (paper and books from trees, glass from sand, etc). Have different colored dots and walk around the classroom and label items with colors from what the item might have came from (green=trees, red=animals), this requires the students to think critically. It's important for children to respect nature and understand most everything we interact with on a daily basis is from nature. As a teacher I can use this to teach children respect of nature and each other because everything must work together.

This is a video resource that I found on Youtube. The many different types of structures and architectural pieces can help students relate more to engineering by showing them structures that they might pass by daily. However, there are also more historical pieces of architecture to allow students to explore just what engineering can create. With all of the historical background, this is also a great way to show connections between science and another area of study. I would use this as an opener to show my students all the different ways in which engineers solved problems for themselves and for society. My science standard is all about students being able to come up with their own solutions to problems and this is a great starting point for that.

This resource contains a multiple day lesson plan for a third grade class. The lesson is about composting. It involves instruction by use of a Power Point, an outdoor exploration, and even an assessment. I selected this resource because it fits the standard to- obtain and combine information about ways individual communities use science ideas to protect the Earth's resources and environment (5-ESS3-1). This standard will be the focus of my lesson in this course. Although this standard is for fifth graders, I believe this resource will still be useful. In order to make the resource at a fifth grade level only a few things need to be tweaked. The lesson plan in this resource could serve as an outline for the lesson plan I will be creating in this course.

This website is a complete unit on plate tectonics for 6th grades. There is a planning guide, scope and sequence, activities, pre and post assessments, and formative assessments. All free and easy to download in as a PDF. The unit has been aligned with the science standards and would provides detailed instructions throughout. By the end of the unit students would know plate tectonics accounts for important features of the Earth's surface and major geological events, the location of earthquakes, mid-ocean ridges, and distribution of fossils, rock types, and ancient climatic zones.

This activity is a great introduction or addition to learning about the rock cycle. By using chocolate, you can show students the difference between weathered, heated, cooled, and compressed rock. The students can use bars of chocolate to create "sedimentary," "metamorphic," and "igneous" chocolate. This is a simple way to effectively show students the difference between the types of rock. The hands-on approach will aid in the students seeing firsthand what the differences look like. It aligns with NGSS focused on the rock formation and cycle, as well as, the geosphere.

How sweet is this activity? It's an introduction to the rock cycle using chocolate! Chocolate can be ground into small particles (weathered), heated, cooled, and compressed - just like rocks. Unlike rocks, chocolate can undergo these processes safely and at reasonable temperatures. Use your chocolate to create "sedimentary," "metamorphic," and "igneous" chocolate. I chose this lesson because it is a great way to get the class focused during a not so exciting topic, not to mention chocolate is my favorite thing on the entire world. I think the chocolate creations are perfect representations of the changing rock, and would allow students to understand the rock changing process easily by using visuals. I would introduce this lesson in an earth science unit as a good tool to show the three stages of rock, and to get the class hooked and ready to discuss the different phases. I would also enjoy making these three phases at home because I am sure there would be lots of left overs!

This is a fun and creative way to get students thinking about size and shape. This lesson could also be used for osmosis. Students could use different liquids to soak the gummies in overnight and make measurements and predictions about size and shape in a journal. It would be fun to do this lesson, because at the end you get to eat gummy bears!

This activity can be used in conjunction with a lesson on rock formation. Each rock is formed through different processes and made up of varying materials. This project lets the students make there own sedimentary rock and observe closely how they are made up of different materials held together by one material.

This video uses humor and science to give a brief history and explain what constellations are and what they represent to both astronomers and ordinary people. I chose this resource because it's been my experience that kids LOVE BrainPOP videos. These videos are a useful tool because they make they make good use of humor while still conveying the facts behind the topic presented. They're also good because each video contains quizzes and other activities after the video. I would use this video to introduce what constellations are before having students look for them with either a telescope or a picture of the night sky.