Resources for Teaching Science

This website could be used as a personal cheat sheet for me if the students ask me a question that I dont know the answer to right there. It can also be used for the students because it has all of the basic formulas the students will need.

Seems pretty advanced for middle school.

This is a field trip that I took with my high school physics class and i think it could be scaled down and still be useful at the junior high level.

This link is actually more direct to the information relevant for planning a school trip. http://www.sixflags.com/stLouis/groups/schools.aspx

Another pre class video to get the classes intrest going in physics. The video is a clip from the T.V. show The Big Bang Theory that may help the younger students pay attention.

I would recommend starting the video at about 1:15 "What is Physics?" Also re-named the resources to be descriptive and added a tag for grades 9-12, for which I think this is actually more appropriate.

This resource allows you to change the temperature of the air and a cloud to see what type of precipitation will be formed. I chose this resource because it is an engaging and interactive way for students to explore precipitation and to see what makes different types of precipitation form. I imagine this resource being used to reinforce their knowledge of precipitation.

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 page contains a few worksheets and a powerpoint. There are also printable pictures and text. All of these can be used to help supplement a lesson on the water cycle.

This is a lesson plan that helps teach the water cycle. It has the students acting as water droplets and moving through different stations in the room to represent them moving through the different stages in the water cycle. I like that in this lesson it gets the students out of their seats.

This website has a few ideas on where to go on a field trip involving the water cycle.

This game is a great way to reinforce the water cycle concepts. It is colorful and bright to engage the children. what I like most is that it reads aloud everything to the player so that children with trouble reading can still fully appreciate the game.

This is a great way to bring something visual to a concept that is mostly invisible: evaporation. It gets the students outside and moving a little.

This is a great activity to make the concept of the water cycle hands-on. Students can watch the process right before their eyes over the matter of an afternoon.

The zoo has always been one of my favorite places to visit, and the best part is that our local St. Louis Zoo is FREE! This would be such an awesome field trip for the first grade students to get to go to. What is better than learning and seeing animals up close, and personal? Students will be able to see the different characteristics of each animal, and where they live for their habitat. They may even be able to take a tour where they can touch different animals to know what they feel like. I hope to get to go to the zoo with my future class! I know the students will love it, and will also love the self-exploration aspect of this awesome field trip.

No matter how old you get everyone is always excited when you get to watch a Bill Nye video in class. This video concentrates on condensation. It provides an engaging introduction to the topic and also shows students that you can do the seemingly impossible (making a cloud in a jar) with science!

In this SmartBoard activity, students get to group different living and nonliving things. It is an introduction to classification based on their physical characteristics. I would use this as an interactive class or group activity that gets everyone thinking about physical characteristics and how we can group different living and non-living things into categories. Students will have to interact with each other, and come to a consensus on what they think the answer will be. This is collaborative learning for them. 

This page is not for student use, it is simply ideas for field trips dealing with weather. I personally like the visiting a new station one. It is practical application

This is a very interactive smartboard activity that goes through different characteristics of living things (i.e. crocodiles have scales, etc), and also requires the students to sort the different living things. They have categories such as animals with fur, animals that swim, etc. This aligns very nicely with the standard 12.A.1b- Categorize living things using a variety of observable features.

According to the description, students are to match what animals live in various habitats. We can go over this a little bit of habitats according to the different physical characteristics that each animal has. It would be a fun activity that incorporates technology that we could do as a class. The only downfall is that I think you have to be a member to the abcteach in order to get this awesome smartboard activity, which will cost some money.

This website opens into a word document that has a TON of different lesson plans for K-1 grade level. The two lesson plans that I really liked were the Adventures in the Rain Forest, and What's the Point of That? The Adventures in the Rain Forrest talked about how living things are dependent on one another, and where they are at in relationship to their environment (the rain forest). The class will embark on a mini pretend field trip to a rain forest where they will discuss where certain things in a rain forest are located, and why it is important. This relates to the standard 12.B.1a really well! The other lesson plan that I really liked in this huge list was the one that was called, "What's the point?" In this lesson plan, the students learn different characteristics of living things and why it is important that they have them. (i.e. the importance of birds having feathers, etc.) I really like this lesson because students will really get a grasp on how all living things are different in a lot of ways, but the reasons behind why they are different. I'm all about celebrating our differences!

I know this is the wikipedia article for physics but it has a lot of good information on the history and need for physics. I could use this article as a starting point for any information I wanted or needed to know and if I find something that doesn't sound right I could double check it with one of the other websites I have saved.