Group items tagged

This website is based in Texas but is a group of individuals that will come into your classroom and teach the students about the need for plants and animals. I selected this website because I feel that younger students love to hear an expert on a subject come in and talk about it. I would use this resource at the beginning of my lesson segment on plant and animal biodiversity to get the students engaged and excited to learn.

LAB - Pig Dissection: This is an illustrated power point presentation that guides students through the dissection of a fetal pig. It includes identification of all external and internal features and structures. A great hands on activity for biology students learning about the body systems, I selected it for its practical applications and because the pig model closely simulates the human systems. Well labeled and extremely detailed.

This resource is a comprehensive series of tutorials illustrating the components of the human body systems. This could serve as a very useful tool for remediating students as well as for early science learners. The color graphics help to guide students through the respective systems by distinguishing the various organs in each system. A useful tool that can also summarize classroom lectures.

Diagrams of body systems are available with or without labels and are also printable.

This resource provides a basic format for illustrating the Scientific Method. It explores the factors that affect seed germination. It emphasizes the brainstorming function and lays out an experimental design for students to follow. Students can make predictions and explain their rationale. A sample experimental design guide is included. This is a very important tool to assist students seeking to answer questions through experimentation.

Students will observe the effects of osmosis on a gummy bear in this guided scientific method lab report. This is a fun visual way to grasp the difficult concept of osmosis. I chose this lesson because when I was in middle school I had difficulty with the concept of osmosis, and I feel that this hands on and visual lab will bring the students to a better understanding of osmosis. Also, this would be a great way to explore osmosis on a deeper level and engage the students because giant gummy bears are cool. I would use this lab during the cells unit in science when we talk about the different properties of the cell wall: osmosis being one of the properties.

As you hold your phone up and point it towards the sky, Star Walk Kids follows your motions using the built-in gyroscope to match the map on your screen to the stars seen from your location. Cartoon-style interface and friendly voice of the narrator effortlessly guide you through the night sky. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The winner of 8 awards, Star Walk Kids is a great astronomy app for students! Kids can learn about planets, stars, and constellations. The app is informational and interactive and completely kid friendly with engaging graphics and colors. I love that this app speaks to the operator and helps to verbally label items, so that children will know how to pronounce a name. The most incredible part of this app, in my opinion, is that it is available in ten different languages. I know that if I had a non-English-speaking student in my class, I would be thankful to have an app that offered a comfortable language for that student. Throught the vitotechnology link, one can access the app's manual to better understand its features and how to operate it. This app does cost $2.99, but I believe that is a small price to pay for such a wonderful app. The following is a YouTube link to a review video that goes through some of the app's functions. This video might be nice to view in order to get a better feel of the app. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5d9zUbXsY6U

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.

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 is a well rounded lesson plan that utilizes online resources as well as in class activities. This serves as a good introduction to the unit and gets the students to be creative. It also hits on multiple styles of learning.

This is an education application for iPad that offers both a free and a paid version. The app is an interactive way for students to learn about the size and history of the solar system. I chose this resource because I liked that it utilized the technology of the iPads as a way to teach science to children. I imagine this resource being used in a small group setting in my classroom.

This is a great experience for students to get a hands-on look into geology, speleology, topography, and even a little biology as well! At Meremac Caverns students get explore the underground caverns in an eighty-minute tour led by a trained guide and a FREE mini-workshop of the teacher's choice. i can say from experience this was one of the most fun field trips I ever went on!

The water cycle describes how Earth's water is not only always changing forms, between liquid (rain), solid (ice), and gas (vapor), but also moving on, above, and in the Earth. This process is always happening everywhere. Back to the water cycle diagram for students. This website can be very functional when teaching about the water cycle. It has a great diagram with clear illustration, words, and even descriptions for a beginner, intermediate, and advance levels. The diagram itself is kind of whimsical and I think the young grades will really be engaged. It also offers detailed descriptions of the different parts of the water cycle in the side bar. This resource would be very valuable when explaining the water cycle. I think teachers could incorporate the diagram during a lesson. Also, they could do informal assessments on the students by having students come up to the smart board and pointing out certain parts of the cycle. Or it could even be a guide for students when they draw their own water cycle for their notes or for a project. Overall, the diagram and the extra explanations over the water cycle can really be helpful in the classroom.

This experiment uses a plastic bag, string, scissors and a small action figure. As you might have guested you are going to make a parachute. After you construct the parachute you will drop it as slow as you can. This shows air resistance. This is a great start to a lesson, an experiment, and even an example of a fair test! I would use this to start a lesson on air resistance ( or maybe even gravity). I would first drop my parachute in the class and ask students what happened. I might even drop both an action figure by himself, and an action figure on a parachute to farther demonstrate the air resistance. I might ask questions such as "why did this action figure fall more slowly? What was stopping him? Why/how? Then after a discussion I would get out materials for the whole class. I would ask students "What could we test using what we now know to create different parachutes and find out which one will work the best?" We would talk about how larger surface area creates more resistance and will make a parachute fall more slowly. In the aspects of a fair test I would try to guide the idea towards testing out maybe 5 different parachutes. The controlled aspect would be using the same material, and same size parachute. What would change would be how many holes we would put in the top of it. Holes in the top cause air to go through the parachute not around it, this causes the parachute to fall more straight. (This is something we might have found out through research.) The goal would be to make a parachute that falls as slow and straight as possible. The challenge would be where to place the holes and how big the holes should be.

To understand that there are different systems within the body and that they work independently and together to form a functioning human body. At this level, children can begin to view the body as a system, in which parts do things for other parts and for the organism as a whole. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This lesson is great because it includes the materials needed, the context of the lesson, an instructional section, and an assessment section. I also really like the "Motivation" section. This seems like the introduction on the McKendree template. I like how this lesson provides verbal prompts that the teacher can use to help guide the students to the correct answer if needed. It seems quote informative and discussed the major systems of the human body. Finally I really enjoy that there are extension activities available with the interactive human body system from innerbody and the body system word find from Discovery Kids and the interactive body system games from All Systems Go. I could certainly see myself using this lesson in my classroom. I think it provides the freedom for tweaks and add-ons as I would see fit and I love the interactive sites and games provided to correlate with the lesson. Also, I think this lesson would be a good fit for many age groups. I think there are some things that would need to be either added or taken away for some ages, but in all it would match will with many.

looks good!

This is an awesome interactive site. This site allows the student to guide his/her own learning while navigating throughout the solar system. It allows the user to move through the solar system and choose a planet, from there it offers several more options:pictures, recent missions, news articles, and endless facts. I could see myself using this as an exploration tool for my students, or I could potentially assign them a planet where they could use this site to gather their information. I really enjoyed exploring this site myself.

Students from all over our community participate in guided field trip tours at the Museum each year. The Museum's educators, all certified teachers, facilitate experiences that support 21st-century skills and core academics as well as creative problem solving and critical thinking. This seems like an amazing field trip opportunity that would keep the students interested as well as the adults and teachers. Just by reading through the descriptions it sounded as though they had something for whichever area peeked your interest, especially in science. They have several activities dedicated to science and what makes this even more attractive to teachers is that they actually have the NGSS standard underneath the individual activity. A few examples of what they offer are: science detectives, recycling, electricity and magnetism. Although, the older students could benefit from each of these if I were teaching between K-2 I would not focus on the science detectives as much as the others. However, pertaining to recycling I could then have an assortment of trash and have the students separate the items into what is recyclable and what isn't. In the end, this would be a beneficial experience for any age.

June 19, 2015 Anatomy 4D is an excellent iPad app for science teachers and students. It provides an interactive 4D experience of the human anatomy using augmented reality technology. Anatomy 4D offers an easy to use 3-dimensional learning environment ideal for classroom use. This is resource is awesome. It is another technology based resource. To use the technology the students will have to download it to a classroom iPad, but from there they are free to explore the many areas of the human body and do so in great detail. It can pinpoint a specific organ that the student wishes to learn about or that is being discussed in class and they will be able to view that organ while learning more facts; it also allows for the example to switch between male and female letting the student notice any differences or similarities. I personally navigated through this to see just what it was about and I could see so many opportunities to incorporate this application within the classroom. For example, it could be reinforcement to a teachers' lesson when discussing human anatomy and the functions of the main organs. I think it's a great tool that should be used within the class, especially since it is interactive after guided learning the student could explore on their own.