Get helpful tips for how to manage data folders in the primary classroom. Download the free student data folders kit to get started!
A couple of resources to start you out for gravity. First of all, the Let’s Read and Find Out title was Gravity is a Mystery by Franklyn Branley was a bit of a disappointment. Unlike most o…
We have started our unit on plants and I am so excited. I love teaching plants! There are so many things that you can do to teach plants and the kids love everything. Today, I introduced the topic by doing a graphic organizer with the class. Then, the kiddos completed one on their own. I...
Last week, as mentioned previously, I attended a very inspiring interdisciplinary meeting at the Royal Society. It would be impossible for me to describe all 47 talks in detail; but I thought that …
Students use a table-top-sized tsunami generator to observe the formation and devastation of a tsunami. They see how a tsunami moves across the ocean and what happens when it reaches the continental shelf. Students make villages of model houses and buildings to test how different material types are impacted by the huge waves. They further discuss how engineers design buildings to survive tsunamis. Much of this activity setup is the same as for the Mini-Landscape activity in Lesson 4 of the Natural Disasters unit.
Orienteering is an exciting adventure sport providing lots of great learning opportunities. These orienteering for kids activities will get you started.
Things change. Routines shift. Schedules adjust. And you find yourself searching for a new normal. When Gary was home a few weeks ago, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. “Gary, how in the world am I going to homeschool this year with an infant when you leave for Brazil?!?” Nevermind the fact that we’ve homeschooled through a […]
As teachers, we are always on a budget. Decorating classrooms can get pricey. When I first started teaching I was spending a fortune online and at teaching supply stores to buy science posters so my walls weren’t so drab. Since then, I’ve been creating my own science posters that the library will print for me ... Read more
One thing that we have in our science curriculum is “Matter”, and the learning targets are so simplistic. We are also supposed to teach “The Scientific Method” which, for many teachers, consists of lots of fun experiments and “oohs” and “ahs”. I agree that this is fun and very motivating for students, but I really […]
Here's the Flying Machine STEM Challenge: Using a list of supplies, STEM teams must design and build a flying machine. Using theirknowledge of the Laws of Motion and 4 Forces of Flight, students must create ainnovative machine that applies those laws and forces. STEM teams have 3 trials to testtheir flying machines.
My son have to determine where to dig a well and where to build his house in our play dough core sampling project.
See the best collection of light and sound experiments from Steve Spangler Science to introduce any child to the wonders of DIY light and sound activities
Since that very faulty "lesson", I've found some MUCH more effective resources. Objective: I can explain why we have seasons.
This unit has been designed to teach a fun and comprehensive Rock Unit in your classroom. Students will study rocks, minerals, weathering & erosion, layers of the eart, earthquakes, and volcanoes. This unit will engage students in a variety of Reading, Writing, and Math CCS so that you can still...
Last week our family experienced another STEM storytime at the Commerce Community Library. This time we were learning about simple machines, I love how these evenings always tie in literature, han…
This worksheet was designed for the TED talk by Paolo Cardini Forget Multitasking, Try Monotasking. I made it for my intermediate students, when we covered the topic on personal skills. It i
One of the labs that I've come to enjoy while we are studying the cell cycle in AP Biology is the Onion Mitosis lab. I love this version of the lab because it requires very little prep time on my part, and within a week, my students have some real data to analyze. The lab I use with my students was modified from Lee Ferguson and can be found on her website, The Biology Space, here under the cell structure and function resources. It's hard to see, but we usually hold the onions up in the beakers by rubber banding them around a straw that sticks lower than the ends of the onions. That way the root bases aren't pushed against the bottom of the beaker. I really only modified the materials that I provide the students to experiment with and how the results will be presented--since my students do a mini poster presentation of their results. The modified lab document can be found here.
When it’s time to head back to school, I think about all of the expectations that must be taught. Some of those expectations are specific to how we use our science class time. Here are 4 anchor charts that accompany class discussions about our expectations. We can revisit these charts as often as needed throughout ... Read more
In this blog post we are going to cover the first 3 steps to project based learning: the entry event, the driving question, and student need-to-knows. In case you missed the first part of this blog series- “What is PBL?” you can click here to go back and read it. Before starting the project with ... Read more
It was around this time of year during my first year of teaching when I got completely overwhelmed with my grading load. My main problem: I felt like I needed to grade EVERYTHING. Until speaking with other teachers about how much time I spent grading, I did not realize grading everything was unnecessary and impossible to sustain. Right then I decided to change my grading habits. My first year I was teaching English to sixth, seventh, and eighth graders. Since every class had two spelling homework assignments and a spelling test every week, the easiest way to reduce grading was to cut out redundant, practice assignments. My first grading change was to only grade one spelling homework assignment per week. I was still grading a ton of assignments, but just that one little change substantially reduced the time I devoted to grading. Since that first year, I have learned many more tricks to reduce grading time. Here are some of those tricks. This one is probably the most obvious: limit what you grade. Whenever possible, I limit myself to two or three assignments per week. I feel like this is enough to give students, parents, and teachers a clear and accurate picture of the students’ understanding of each topic and overall effort. I can see their understanding with each assessment grade and see their general effort levels reflected in whether or not they finish their homework completely and on time. Prioritize the most important assignments or parts of assignments. Choose what will give you the best picture of student understanding and grade that. If you have a lengthy assignment, pick only a few sections to spend time on and give a completion grade for the rest. Occasionally give completion grades. When totally swamped with teaching duties, this can save your sanity. If students complete all of an assignment, I give them 100%. If they only do half, they get 50%. I limit this to homework assignments and try not to do it too often because it doesn’t reflect student understanding. However, when I have more pressing teaching duties that will have a greater impact on my students’ learning I think this is acceptable. Have a no name policy you can handle. I used to post no name papers on the bulletin board (most remained unclaimed) and did detective work to figure out which paper belonged to which student. That took a lot of time and was not something I felt should be the teacher’s responsibility. After a couple of years of this, I decided my seventh-grade students should be responsible enough to do something as simple as writing their name on their assignment. Consequently, I communicated this to my students and made it my class policy to throw out no names. Whatever no name policy you decide to implement, make sure it works for you and doesn’t add more time and effort than it deserves. Limit late assignments. I used to take late assignments all quarter long (at a 25% grade reduction). This resulted in a deluge of assignments from students who waited until right before grades were due. It generated a ton of work for me when I needed to be wrapping things up. I had to remember how I graded each assignment, which was time consuming in and of itself. Cue a new late assignment policy: assignments are accepted no later than two weeks overdue. This policy makes it so I can still easily remember how I graded something and also keeps my grading duties at a reasonable level, even when the gradebook is almost due. Don’t let the assignments pile up. This can happen quickly and become overwhelming. Try grading in little spurts throughout the week so you never end up with more than a week’s worth of accumulated assignments. Have student helpers. Most students enjoy helping the teacher with little tasks. I often have students organize my ungraded papers so they are all neatly stacked, facing up, and paper-clipped by assignment and class period. The time saved really adds up. Let students grade their own assignments or swap papers with a classmate. This gives students quick feedback on how they are doing with a topic and where they can improve. You can discuss answers as a class and clear up problem areas as soon as they present themselves. When grading this way, I usually don’t add the grades to the gradebook because the students already know exactly how they did and it’s too easy for students to cheat. Always use a rubric when applicable. This sounds so important and obvious. But, let me tell you, there have been times when I was so overwhelmed with teaching that I didn’t have a rubric when I assigned the project. This is a huge no-no. Without a rubric, the students don’t have clear expectations. You will end up with all sorts of projects and no fair, consistent way to grade them. It becomes a time-consuming mess to grade. Trust me—always use a rubric. Design exit tickets with ease of grading in mind. Since all of my exit tickets go in the gradebook, almost all of them are short—between four and five questions long—and are mainly multiple choice. If it is important to see the depth of student understanding, I might add one question that requires students to answer in sentences. By sticking to this general format, I am able to whip through grading exit tickets. (If you teach middle school science you might be interested in my Exit Ticket Package, which contains a bunch of exit tickets designed this way.) Make peer reviewing part of projects. During big projects, take a little class time for peer reviewing. When students evaluate their classmates’ work, they learn from each other and learn to think critically. The peer review can be something as simple as providing one thing they liked about a project and one way to improve it. You could take it further by printing extra rubrics and having students grade each other that way. If you include some form of peer reviewing once or twice before students turn in their projects, you will receive higher quality work which requires less grading time from you. Implementing even just a few of these strategies will greatly reduce your grading time. Of course it’s impossible to completely eliminate grading so, if all else fails, make the time you have to spend grading as painless as possible. Use fun pens and stickers. Listen to music and light a nice smelling candle. Have a yummy snack and a special drink (or two). Wear comfy clothes and put your dog on your lap. Recruit a friend to help. What do you do to save time spent grading? How do you make grading a more pleasant experience? Comment below to share your ideas.
Welcome to a series that is must read for any PBL or STEM educator. It will include information to reflect and build upon as you consider both PBL and STEM. Best of all, it will finish with over …
These free rocks and minerals printables and Montessori activities are perfect for preschoolers through early elementary in the classroom or at home!
Read Kayak46 they shoot they score by Canada's History on Issuu and browse thousands of other publications on our platform. Start here!
Teaching procedural writing can be tricky. Giving students templates will help them orgazine their steps for a "how-to" writing.
Today is the last day to enter my Weekend Wishlist Giveaway for the fabulous Maggie Tote! The winner will be announced tomorrow morning! Let's link up to share what happened in our classrooms this week. Me first! :) In math, we are working on our place value unit. Students practiced writing expanded form by playing "Bull's Eye" using a target and paperclips. They wrote their scores in expanded form (ex. 100+30+2=132). Students are also learning to write numbers in word form. To make sure they are mastering the spelling of these words, we made flashcards and "Mastery Pockets." We'll save these to use for MANY activities this year! Here's how to make a "Mastery Pocket": Step 1: Take a 2-pocket folder. Cut a semi-circle shape ABOVE the inside pockets. Step 2: Cut down the fold along the white semi-circles (in pic above) so it creates two flaps. Fold flaps down. Step 3: Use velcro dots to secure flaps down so that they create pockets that can open and close. I got these Velcro mini-dots that worked PERFECTLY at Wal-Mart in the craft section. Step 4: Print labels that say "Practice" and "Mastered" to go on each pocket. You can download mine here! Voila! Now you have a cheap, easy solution to storing flashcards that students are using to master skills. And, students LOVE being able to move cards from the "practice" pocket to the "mastered" pocket! They also love to decorate them and make them their own. ;) In science, we're still learning about animals. This week we finished up learning about all of the animal classification groups. Students created flipbooks to help them remember the characteristics of the different animal groups. I love using different textures to represent the animals' body coverings! Mammals - fur fabric from a craft store to represent hair/fur Reptiles - onion sack to represent scales Amphibians - wax paper to represent smooth, moist skin Birds - craft feather to represent feathers Fish - onion sack to represent scales Insects - a piece from a hard plastic 3-ringed folder to represent an exoskeleton Inside they wrote examples of animals that would belong in each group and characteristics of that group. (Animal Groups Flipbook from Teacher's Clubhouse) I ended my week by taking one of my SWEET students to Frankie's Fun Park for putt-putt, bowling, and games! She won a date with me from the silent auction at our school's carnival. It was a fun time and a perfect ending to the week! She won over 2,000 tickets and insisted on buying me something with them - a Gamecock Hello Kitty! I'm pretty sure it's going to bring my Cocks good luck tomorrow...maybe I'll take it to the game -ha! Gotta love those sweet students! ;) What happened in your classroom this week?
For Science this week we continue to record changes in our Mold Gardens we also did an observation on a rock. We passed the rock around the...
