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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.

This website gives the teacher a free printable booklet for students. In the activity, the students have to put in order (sequence) the life cycle of plants. This is exactly what the lesson as a whole is about so I feel that this would be perfect for them to make just as an enforcer. If the student would ever forget or be confused, they could look at their booklet as a refresher.

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.

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.

In this lesson students earn the basic parts of seeds and what they need to grow into a plant. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ I cannot rave about this website enough. It is incredible. The lesson here is on seeds and this website has many portions of the McKendree template prepared already. There is an introduction, instructional sequence, resources, materials, and assessment. I really appreciate the depth of this lesson. It starts with an engaging introduction to get kids thinking and then allows for group work and a hands-on opportunity with seeds. I really like that kids get to hear what the parts of a seed are, view it on a diagram, and also witness it inn reality with an actual seed. This site provides an accompanying video from Sesame Street as well as other websites that would extend the lesson if desired. I would absolutely use this lesson in my classroom. I think something like seeds could be seen as a "boring" topic to some children, but if I used this lesson, I think it would help the topic to come alive and really get the children engaged. I would carry out this lesson as it is constructed, but add my own flair where needed.

The purpose of the lesson is for students to understand and sequence the life cycle of a frog, beginning with the frogspawn and ending with the frog. The website also says that this lesson is designed for kindergartners. The students will make observations of a tadpole and then read the story, Life Cycle of a Frog by Angela Royston. The students will then complete a graphic organizer of the story. I like that this lesson requires the students to determine important information in the story and then complete a graphic organizer using that information.