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 website is amazing! It offers over 100 interactive online games on more than 30 different topics and it is completely free. Science games are excellent assets to any Science lesson. Interactive games make learning complicated concepts fun and easy for some children. As an adult playing some of these games I felt like I gained a better understanding of certain topics, so I know some children would find these games beneficial and effective extensions to lessons. This website seems to have a little bit of everything from animal classification to biomes to physics and motion. Some of the games offer a short assessment at the end to really see if the children are learning the concept. Having games like these available would make a great addition to a remediation plan if students are having difficulties grasping a particular topic. I will definitely be visiting this site again when I am teaching!

The San Angelo Nature Center is a collection of animals, along with related exhibits and information, that are native to the Southwest. Among the animals are bobcats, skunks, a porcupine, hissing cockroaches, tarantulas, scorpions, turtles, lizards and snakes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The SANC is an incredible place. There are many different types of mammals, reptiles, bugs, and insects for children to experience. Being a former volunteer of the SANC, I know first-hand all of the possibilities this place offers. One of my favorite things about this place is the up close and personal experience children get with the animals. Children can choose to hold various reptiles including snakes, box turtles, or the center's two bearded dragons, Bonnie and Clyde. If they desire, children may hold or touch a hissing cockroach, a cave cockroach, a tarantula, or my personal favorite creature, the vinegarroon! Children can also meet Opus and Juliet, two African spurred tortoises. This place contains many facts and trivia about the various animals and is an exciting place for adults and kids alike.

This is an entire unit on wetlands and it is completely free. There are five lessons on wetlands that each build on one another. I really like how the first lesson relies solely on the student's senses to experience wetlands. There are activities for each of the five senses that really get children engaged and in tune to what a wetland is. The second lesson teaches about different types of wetlands and includes a game to help learn them. Lesson three is great because it pairs this ecology lesson on wetlands with an English lesson on metaphors. It even includes objectives with measurable verbs, There are also great extension activities included! Each lesson in this unit plan has at least one video paired with it. I really like when there are videos provided, because teachers don'e have to use them, but they may if they choose. I would certainly use some of the videos that I thought would help better explain the context of the lesson, so visual and auditory learners would be able to better grasp the content. I could certainly see myself using this lesson in my future classroom. Especially since it is for upper elementary and middle school which are my ideal age group.

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.

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.

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.

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.