Group items tagged

Off the Rail is an exciting app that let's kids build and enjoy their very own roller coasters in a virtual environment. The fun is in the on the fly building while they are riding the coaster. With varying difficulty levels and extras to add lots of interest to each coaster, this app is one that will have little creative minds going for hours. I like this app because it will get my students creative minds thinking! It really encourages the students to use STEM! This app could be used when students finish their work early or it could even be used as a center.

This application allows for students to build their own roller coaster in a virtual reality. I really like the idea of students creating and constructing things. This application lets students create whatever their mind wants to. I believe that creativity is an easy way for students to become engaged in a lesson or activity. I would personally use this app to supplement a lesson focusing on force.

While some of us stand out in a crowd others tend to blend in and it's the same in the animal kingdom. This animal camouflage lesson plan explains some of the concepts and offers a fun activity to help kids understand how camouflage works. This lesson involves learning about adaptations of animals in their environment. Specifically, we would be discussing camouflage. In the activity that goes with the lesson, students would make cardboard cut-outs of animals, color them, and try to hide them around the room in areas where their camouflage would benefit them most. Students would also learn how some animals prefer to stand out in their environment as a warning to others. For extensions of this lesson, we could discuss how hunters and soldiers use man-made camouflage. I could also take the kids outside and have them find somewhere that they would blend in the best based on their clothing.

This resources lists instructions on how to make Ice Cream in a bag. I think this is a great way to reward students for all the hard work they do while not completely letting them rest their brains (like they would if they were watching a video). Another thing I like about this lesson is that it could be performed with students at various ages. I could definitely see my future classroom participating in this activity after a lesson on reactions. I would also plan to use this activity on a partial day to keep the learning going instead of an activity like watching a movie. This is also a great way to incorporate an educational activity into a party.

Students use potatoes to light an LED clock (or light bulb) as they learn how a battery works in a simple circuit and how chemical energy changes to electrical energy. As they learn more about electrical energy, they better understand the concepts of voltage, current and resistance. I chose this because I never did this in school! This really seems like an exciting and engaging lesson/activity. This lesson could be done in separate parts, with the first part being lecture based (learning about electricity) and the second part being the activity with the potato. I like how this resource has follow-up questions at the end of the lesson.

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 is an android app, there is a free trial but then you do have to pay about $3 for the rest of the experiments. The app opens with an experiment using batteries, tape, paper, two alligator clips, and a pencil led. The isea is to build a simple circuit. The whole experiment is guided on what ever device you use. After the experiment is conducted it is even explained. The guide even tells you why pencil led was used, graphite contains carbon and carbon can carry electricity. I would use this app in a young classroom to introduce electricity, or the flow of energy. I might even use this as an opener so everyone can do it. Then we might discuss what exactly we learned, or what else we would like to know. I would also set up at least one real experiment to show the students up close. I wouldn't let them do a real one on their own unless they were 3rd grade and up. I think this is an amassing way to introduce electricity and show students how circuits work. Electricity is a real world thing that they use every day.

I thought this would be a cute video to use as an introduction to solids, liquids, and gases. This would work best with younger grades (1-3) as the video uses a lot of animation and a catchy song. "Enjoy the bright and colorful animations in this science video that helps explain the different states of matter in an easy to understand way."-Science Kids

This activity calls for students to use their imagination when it comes to the different colors. Students are required to know how to classify object according to their color, for example: a blue toy car, a red pony, a green tree. This activity helps younger students work on their sorting skills. In my classroom I would have construction paper divided into four parts. On each part would be a color; Blue, Red Green, and Yellow. I would provide the glue and different colored objects to sort and glue, sequins, stickers, beads, pom-poms, buttons, feathers, macaroni, and foam shapes. Each student will be required to sort and glue objects by color.

This interactive animation explains how the Krebs cycle works, and to validate the information learned, there is a short quiz following. This is a great interactive tool that students can access at home tor review the content

This website offers information on the major topics in Chemistry. It explains the key components and terminology and offers examples to use in class. Worksheets and answer keys are also available for each topic. One of the teachers I observed last year used these worksheets with her class often to supplement the problems in the book. The students seemed to welcome the extra practice and change of pace. I think it is a helpful website, but depending on the level of students you end up working with, the worksheets may need to be edited. Some of the problems seemed a little too advanced for a first year Chemistry class.

This lesson plan introduces the idea of creating and engineering to solve a problem. Students work in groups to create a flotation device to support a can of soup. There's a pdf for the lesson and then a word document for each group students to use where they draw out their idea and explain the certain steps and conclusions they came to during the whole process. I chose this lesson because it fits into my standard about talking about different solutions to a problem by looking at the confinements and criteria that the activity has in place (3-5-ETS1-2)

This resource gives a lab (activity) that deal with vibrations. You need to have a large bowl and cover it with plastic wrap- a rubber band will hold the plastic wrap in place. You then place large sugar crystals on top of the plastic wrap and let students get close and talk into the bowl. The students will be able to watch the sugar crystals "jump" because of the vibrations. I chose this resource because it sounded very interesting and it makes me want to actually test it out to see if it works. I think that my students would enjoy doing this and it would help them understand that sound travels and bounces off objects creating vibrations. I would use this resource in correlation to a lesson about vibrations and sound; It would be a follow up activity for students to do.

This is an interactive site that provides a range of information and resources for students and teachers. The site includes videos, lesson plans, quizzes, games, projects and other resources. I chose this specific topic about animals because it can be used to teach students about the food chain. Students can interact with animals and other living things like plants and learn the process of how the food chain works.

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!

When you breathe in, your diaphragm - the muscle at the base of your lungs, contracts. This expands your chest cavity, lowering the air pressure of the cavity below the air pressure outside, and inflating the lungs. You can see this same principle at work in this 'homemade lung'. This activity will definitely keep students interested. It's all hands-on and will allow them to be able to visualize an action, breathing, that is constantly occurring within their own bodies. I chose this activity because I think so many don't actually understand what is happening within their own bodies, and by being able to visualize this action I think makes it easier to understand. This activity has the students making a "homemade lung" out of simple supplies and then observing how our chest cavities contract and our lungs inflate. I could see myself using this activity when discussing the human body, in particular lungs. It is so important that the students understand how the body functions and I think that this activity does a great job in illustrating that.

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.

This activity has each student growing their own plant. I was looking at the standards and I thought that this activity would work for 3-LS1-1, which says that students should develop models to describe that organisms have unique live cycles but have a common birth, reproduction, and death. I think that it would be interesting for the students to see how different plants grow from a seed and then develop unique characteristics. This activity would also teach the students responsibility, because they would be in charge of taking care of the plant. I would envision using this activity by splitting the students into groups and giving each of them a plant to care for, the students would also be in charge of keeping a weekly journal.

Composting is the oldest form of recycling. It provides an opportunity for students to observe the decomposition process and energy cycle at work; produces a valuable soil supplement; and reduces the amount of organic material requiring a landfill or incineration. This is a neat hands on lesson that can last up to the whole year! The students get to understand the process of composting and will learn that there we can use other methods of eliminating our trash. My favorite part is that they get to physically see what is happening in the soil. I would start this activity towards the beginning of the year. The students can volunteer to bring in items from the materials list to help feel involved in the prep. I would have the students keep a journal about the chances they see when we check on the compost bin.

This site shows different activities and "labs" to show or work through to demonstrate the first law of physics. I feel like depending on what activities you choose to do this could easily stretch across multiple grades levels.