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This "app inventor app" designed by MIT allows students to harness the process of app making in an app itself. The MIT App Inventor provides six-week training courses, teacher supports, and educational challenges! I see coding, programming, etc. becoming a very large part of our education world very soon, and if it's not, it should be! Providing my students with the knowledge and experience they need to be technologically literate is one of the most useful tools I can send them into the future with! I envision this resource being used specifically as a lesson in the classroom, or a class project- or, alternatively this resource could be used as an additional activity for students to tackle when they are finished with their work (thus allowing them educational screen time.)

Exceptional website with multiple resources for teaching various lessons on evolution...30+ links to individual pages with everything from PPT presentations, handouts, assessment tools, photos, and lab projects. May be the most complete place for a teacher to go to get everything he/she needs when putting together a lesson.

Free elementary science activities and interactive educational science games for kids. This is a good website to use in the classroom for down time. There are many games, puzzles, and worksheets for students. I would use this in my classroom for students who finish a project early and need something to do.

Online puzzles and word finds, and a lot of printable coloring sheets. Some background information. Some are science related, some not. A LOT of ads around edges of pages, and tricky embedded links as well, which makes me leery of the idea of setting students loose on this to work independently.

This website was uploaded by BPS Elementary Science Exemplars Project. It is a great lesson plan on how to teach first graders to differentiate between living and nonliving things. This would be a great way for me to introduce the lesson plan to my class. I really like how it still has a lot of pictures to match with the words, in case some readers are not as advanced as others. This lesson plan is very kid friendly, and would be engaging for them, because I could also use several objects in the classroom/around the school to ask if it is living or non-living. After the students gave me their answer, I would then go into characteristics of each living or non-living thing.

This resource is a great resource to consider when covering plant and animal behaviors. It is basically a tool that a teacher could use in the classroom to help get the students to understand different behaviors, but it could also be a guide in helping a teacher bring in a plant or animal and using this tool to talk about the different behaviors of that plant or animal.

This would be a good activity for younger students to explore magnets. I think this project because the students get to explore and discover things on their own. They get to try different objects and figure out what works and what does and the similarities in the objects.

While navigating through the website, students will be able to obtain knowledge on our solar system and all of the planets involved. Each planet has its own page of information. I like this website, because you can have the students use technology (the computers) and team work to find all of the information on each of the planets. I would have pairs of students receive one planet, and then sharing to the class about their information (This would help the kinesthetic learners) Also, there is a short 4 minute video that is called the "The Solar System Song" which has information about each planet. I would use this after the students all shared their information on what they learned on their planet. By sharing this video it incorporates technology, review and for those visual learners a small video to help them remember planets. There is also a planet quiz on the website as well as links to the stars and moons pages.

This page gives good background information on the solar system. I chose this source because I think it is a good place to start a lesson on the solar system. I imagine this will begin the unit on the Solar System.

I would use this during my lesson/teaching time with my children before most activities and projects. This website gives a page of facts about recycling and each material that is recyclable.

This website gives a list of famous astronauts and their biography. I would use this in a classroom and give each students an astronaut and have them research the astronaut and give us (the class) a short presentation on their findings. You could use this website in multiple ways.

As plants grow, they move up toward the light. But what is a plant's favorite color? Do plants move toward some colors more than others? Problem: Do plants bend toward certain colors of light? This experiment would be great for a 4th or 5th grade classroom for the students to see different plant behavior. I would definitely use this resource within my classroom as a project for the class to do throughout a period of time. I personally like this experiment because it will get the kids excited and interested because they have no idea what to expect or to even think a plant will grow more towards a certain color than another.

This activity, designed by ZOOM, allows students to help the environment by cutting down their paper garbage, and recycling it themselves into a new piece of paper. The instructor must gather the materials for the students, and must be available to help the students throughout the process. The students must follow step-by-step instructions on how to transform their original piece of garbage paper, into a brand new piece of paper. I am a strong advocate of recycling. I can see myself using this activity in my future classroom to show students that anyone can save our planet, and have fun in the process.

This resource shows instructions, materials and photos for creating a shoe box habitat. The website lists that this craft is for 1st graders, but I think that it could be just as easily used in a 2nd grade classroom. Students get to choose which type of habitat they would like to create and are able to work on it at school and home. I selected this resource because I feel that it would be a great activity to reinforce 2-LS4-1. This craft would not be necessarily a lesson, but rather something that ties into the after math of learning about animal/plant habitats. I would use this resource as either an end of the unit craft to discuss in the class and compare/contrast each others, or as an extra credit project to do at home.

Once students have learned to observe weather, they can build their own weather tools through the directions on this website. They can record their own weather data and understand how we find temperature, wind speed, cloud type, humidity, etc. Teachers could incorporate this into future lesson plans to engage students about weather and give them a hands-on experience into the world of a meteorologist.

I like the opportunity for students to make their own weather instruments. They could do this in class, or as a family project and then monitor different aspects of the weather at home as well.

STUDY JAMS! A website sponsored by Scholastic books. This page includes a 3 minute video, sing-a-long, vocabulary lesson, and quiz. In addition, this sight includes a link for a matter lesson plan and teachers guide

Love the video, which could be used as a good review, or in segments along with instruction and experiments on the individual phases of matter. Very kid-relevant and scientifically correct, including temperature and molecule movement, using the analogy of "teams" of molecules.

This resource describes how to make a rain gauge. This resource is valuable because it is a hands-on activity that will help students not only observe rain patterns, but will also help them to chart them. I would have my students make these in groups and we would then chart the rain fall over the course of the unit.

This is an experiment for students to make their own rain gauge. I would use this in my classroom by having each student make their own rain gauge and them placing them in their yards at home. I would try to do this during the spring and rainy season and have students record their measurements after each rain. Students would then compare their measurements with their classmates and determine where the most rain fell.

This activity is a challenge to see if students can construct a bridge built out of toothpicks. The challenge revolves around certain guidelines and at the end, the bridges are tested to see how well they are able to hold weight. This is another activity I participated in during my schooling. It taught all of the participants planning skills, craftsmanship, and also the ability to compromise. I think this is a more applicable activity than the tissue paper hot air balloon activity because it is a less tedious object to construct. I believe my future students will find this activity a welcomed challenge.

Enjoy our range of fun science experiments for kids that feature awesome hands-on projects and activities that help bring the exciting world of science to life. Plant Seeds & Watch Them Grow Learn about seed germination with this fun science experiment for kids. _____ The link posted is a site about planting a type of seed and watching it grow over time. I like the idea behind the seed germination activity because it would allow students to see the development of a plant from its original stage. I would incorporate this experiment at the beginning of a unit on the growth of plants as my way to capture my students attention. This activity could be used for K thru 5th (ish) grade. In the early grades, students could observe the growth of a plant from its seed. In later grades, the students could compare the growth pattern of different types of seeds. We could either plant one or a few seeds as a class, or each student could be responsible for their own seeds.

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.

This is an activity resource I found about a robot arm activity for students. The information for the activity along with the full pdf file and the student worksheet are free to download. I liked all the information that the page offered, as well as the complete list of items for each group of students to use to create their robot arm. I think that this is another great way for students to see the many different sides of engineering. It's not all just about space or building skyscrapers. The goal of the project itself is for the robot arm each group creates to be able to grab and carry a foam cup. It's not too much of a daunting task and the goal is clear and is easily viewed when it comes to assessment.