Fun and engaging force and motion experiments, project ideas, demonstrations, book lists and more! Great for the classroom and home!
The 5E Model of Science Instruction was exactly what I needed to streamline the process of planning and implementing a student-led inquiry-based learning
A few days ago, I posted a picture on my Instagram account that got a really positive response. You guys saw my self-directed learning progression and you all said you wanted it! Since you wanted it, it's up for free in my Teachers Pay Teachers store, so grab it now before you forget!! Click here or on the picture below to grab your copy. I like this learning progression because it helps the students to assess where they are in three areas: academics, problem-solving capabilities, and social-emotional development. The rubric is also growth mindset-friendly because it moves from "Not Yet" all the way to "Wow!!!" I used my school's poster maker to make a big copy of this progression. It hangs on our wall next to our class rules. We refer to it often. I also use these with students sometimes--they just circle the one they feel best describes where they are at a given moment. I have two versions of the rubric, one that mentions "CARES" (a Responsive Classroom idea) and one that just mentions "good classroom citizenship." Pick the one that works for you and start using it! If you don't discuss CARES in your classroom, I absolutely recommend introducing it at the beginning of the year. These social skills are all-encompassing. If you've got these 5 qualities under control, you're in a really good place! I always mention these to my students and say that one of our class goals will be to develop these qualities as individuals. Did you download the learning progression yet? If not, what are you waiting for?! Click here to grab it! By the way, if you haven't already subscribed, we'd love to have you! Join our community by signing up in the box right under my bio to the right. That way, you won't miss any blog posts. I promise not to clutter your inbox! Make sure to follow me on Instagram for more classroom ideas than I put on my blog.
Make a big impact on students' long-term learning with the four most powerful tools backed by cognitive science research : retrieval practice, spacing, interleaving, and feedback-driven metacognition. Access free downloads and our four favorite teaching strategies for each Power Tool.
This one takes a little prep work the first time 'round. But after that, you're set forever. It's a great way to include a little kinesthetic activity into the study of DNA. First, the prep work: On a long strip of paper* write out a string of DNA bases (actually, you're making the mRNA). You want to make sure your letters are evenly spaced - I actually marked the paper. Keep a codon chart handy - make sure you begin with a start codon and don't come to a stop codon immediately. And, don't make the mistake of using T instead of U, as someone did... Now you need to make a ribosome through which your strip of paper can fit. I made mine out of fun foam. It has magnets on the back, so it sticks to the white board. Cut the window in the ribosome, so that you can see 3 bases at a time (hence the reason for evenly spacing your letters). Use this picture to guide you: Now you need to make the amino acids. Once again I used fun foam. I wrote the amino acid on the foam, punched holes in it and strung string through the holes so the students could wear them. For the activity: Draw a huge circle on the board - a cell. Sketch in a nucleus and stick your ribosome in the middle as well. Show your students the mRNA (your paper strip) moving from the nucleus to the ribosome. Feed the mRNA into the ribosome. Have your students translate the first 3 mRNA bases into an amino acid. Have a student put the appropriate amino acid placard on and stand in front of the room. Move the mRNA to the next three bases. Determine the amino acid. Have another student put on the appropriate placard, then stand next to the first student and hold his/her hand. Proceed this way until you come to a stop codon, or until you've made your point. Your students will have a better feel for how a ribosome translates mRNA, how proteins are formed, and understand that proteins are long chains of amino acids. * I got a few sentence strips from an elementary teacher in my building - they're the perfect size and shape for this, I didn't have to cut them, and they have lines marked on them! ****** I learned this from a fellow teacher at a NJ Science Teachers Association Convention several years ago. I don't know who that teacher is - but if you're out there, please let me know - I'd like to give you credit.
Get your students excited to learn about forces causing movement with these fun and engaging activities they will love.
If you are like me you HATE lecturing. I simply cannot find the strength every class to get in front of students and blab on while...
Looking to create good study habits? See habits that create an effective daily study routine, make you a better student & life long learner.
8 Effective Study Tips For AsLike many students, I do not have photographic memory and need to study hard and effectively to be successful in school. The study tips listed below has allowed me to ace classes and exams over the years and I hope that they will help my fellow students out there in the world.1. Make the material personally meaningfulWrite your notes in your own words and form various cue associations, such as images and experiences. Rote memorization can only go so far. 2. Use mnemonic devices & diagramsCreate a story involving large chunks of information or items or separate them into acronyms (Be as funny or as crude as you would like). For information that is hard to describe, try drawing diagrams and be creative with color coding to help you visualize. 3. Fill out or make the study guide.If a professor creates a study guide for you, trust me on this and fill it out the best you can. However, if they do not provide one, create your own. This requires you to go through your notes, consolidate them, and organize them in a way that you understand which is very valuable. 4. Test your knowledge.You can ace your exams by strengthening your brain to retain information. By practicing and self-testing, you will know the material by the exam days. Create flashcards, whether tangible or online (e.g. www.quizlet.com), and go over them regularly. They are excellent memory reinforcement tools and sites can offer games to help you stay engaged. Don't stress and cram the night before an exam. However, there is nothing wrong with light refreshers of the material.5. Minimize interferenceIt is very important to know the best environment that you can study in. Do you study better in a noisy or quiet place? Can you focus better with music on? Do you get distracted by the internet and social media?If distracted by sites, use a web extension that can block sites for a certain amount of hours. Also, put away your phone!!6. Find the best way YOU learn.I personally know that I learn better when I read and write the material I want to memorize over and over again. However, for my study buddy, she needs to hear and repeat material out loud as an auditory learner. Find out what your learning style is through the above diagram or the VARK Questionnaire (http://vark-learn.com/). 7. Take breaksOverworking your brain limits absorption of information. Taking breaks helps destress and focus. This does not mean for an hour or more, but take at least 15 minute breaks in between long study sessions. Eat some snacks and drink some water during this time.Another recommendation is using the Pomodoro technique, which is a timer that breaks down productivity into intervals and short breaks. There are various online sites and apps that offer this or something similar. 8. Get a study buddyIt's better to suffer together. Just kidding. Having a friend or classmate to study with can help you split up work or simply provide someone to review the material with. Additionally, they can explain information that you may not understand thoroughly and vice versa.
The Month of December is such a busy and fun time! I don't want learning to take a backseat, so I made some FUN-filled NO PREP Packets for the month of
The past few years I’ve had the opportunity to teach a course entirely through project based learning. Our local university approached a couple of schools in our district and asked us if we were interested in teaching a cross-curricular PBL program where our grade 12 students can earn college credits. Ummmm…. heck yeah! Basically, the ... Read more
Kagan strategies are nothing new – if you haven’t been to a conference then surely you know a teacher who has. I was one of those teachers that absorbed all the information teachers could give me about Kagan Learning since I was never lucky enough to attend. While I pushed cooperative learning and being interactive, […]
Hello Everyone! It is so nice to have time to put some finishing touches on a couple of units that we have coming up! Another historical figure we will study after Eleanor Roosevelt is Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. As a nation we celebrate his life daily! Thank you Dr. King! Officially we celebrate on the third Monday of January. I have posted about our activities before, but I went through and cleaned up, and added to my unit. Here are some pics from the updated unit! If you would like the 30 page free printable unit CLICK HERE!! :) My second offering for today is a unit our curriculum team worked on this summer. We had fun integrating reading and social studies and are finding it a natural way to teach and get everything in. This next unit is about other important historical figures. It includes posters about Alexander Graham Bell, Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Garrett Morgan, and Richard Allen along with reading strategy practice activities. It also includes an invention home project packet for kids. The unit ended up to be over 50 pages! I am excited to include this unit in our curriculum in a few weeks!! Here are a few pics from the unit! For your free 52 page Inventors Unit CLICK HERE!! :) So glad I had time to share these endeavors! Hope you can use at least parts of either one! It is my joy to be able to share and help your journey in the classroom or homefront become a little less stressful. As always, please let me know if this is something you can use, if there are any typos or problems, and if you would like to see something else in particular on this little blog. I hear from teachers and parents from all over the world, and I am so grateful for all of you!! Joyfully! Nancy
Executed well, student-centered instructional methods can disarm some of the more intimidating parts of academia.
{Download FREEBIE pack here.} Economics is my absolute FAVORITE social studies unit to teach. There are so many hands-on activities to do with students and they are so eager to earn and spend money! One of my favorite activities is to end with our "Madden's Marketplace." This is a chance for students to put into action all of the things they have learned about being producers and consumers. To begin with, I send home a letter asking students to create paper goods. Why paper? It's something all of my students have at home (or I can easily give them). I want my marketplace to be fair for all students. I'm sure I could let them have the freedom to create any product, using any materials and I would get some amazing masterpieces. I would also get some elaborate (and expensive) items. That's not what I want. I encourage parents to spend NO money on this and for it to be STUDENT CREATED. I really want them to take the initiative. Here are some samples of paper products my students created to sell this year - everything from rockets to bookmarks to lanterns to hats. I incorporate the making of goods into my students' homework schedule, encouraging them to create two products per night. Before the due date, we work on creating "shops" in class. We create our "shop" by gluing two file folders together. The picture below is using legal-sized file folders, but that just happens to be what we had available. Shop Parts: Signs: Initially, we create the signs for our shops, color the awnings to make them eye-catching. Open/Closed: Next, we create open/closed signs that sit atop our shop so we can easily flip the sign to show the status of our shops. Slogan: We then come up with a catchy slogan. We talk about slogan's we know from commercials. Why did those stick in our heads? We learn to use a play on words, alliteration, onomatopoeia, etc. to make our slogans catchy so consumers will remember them. Product Description: Students each write a product description detailing WHAT their product is and HOW it works or can be used. We talk about the importance of letting consumers know exactly what they are getting. Commercial Script: Finally, students write commercials to "sell" their products to their classmates. We use hooks to get their attention, repetitions of our catchy slogans, and persuasion. Other Components: We also glue on the Consumer Comments, Price, and Interest Inventories, but we leave all of those blank initially. On the day of the marketplace, students set up their shops and lay their products out on display. Then, they have a chance to walk around the classroom and "window shop." They are encouraged to take a good look at all of their options, reading the product descriptions and examining the merchandise. After students have had a good look at all of their choices, I give them stickers (I would recommend 3-4). They walk around and place their stickers on the "Interest Inventory" of the products that interest them the most. The results of the interest inventory are used by the shop owners to determine if they have a high demand or low demand for their products. Knowing the demand helps them determine a price for their product. High demand = higher price. Low demand = lower price. The only rule is that all prices have to be in whole dollars. Once prices are set, then students are ready to go shopping! There are many different ways to let students shop. Some years, if I've done economy-based management system, my students will use "money" they've earned to shop. This year, I just gave them all $12 to shop with. I'm always torn about letting my students split into groups to run their shops (half shop while half work) - it always seems that students don't get to shop at all of the stores in that scenario. To solve that problem, I let all of my students shop at the same time. To do this students create "tokens" to leave at their shop. They create the same number as products they have to sell. For example, if Katie has 10 kites to sell, she creates and leaves 10 tokens with her name or shop name on them. Once each shop has tokens, students are ready to shop. Since there are no workers at the shops to collect money, I give my students "consumer spending logs" with pictures of dollars on them. Since I gave my students 12 dollars to spend, their consumer spending logs had 12 one dollar pictures. As students go around to the shops, they color in the dollars they've spent and pick up tokens (NOT products) that they will trade in for their purchases once the shops close. Once all of the tokens are gone, that shop is "closed." Once a student has colored in all of the dollars on his/her spending log, they are done shopping. It really works out quite well. Once students have traded all of their tokens in for their goods, they are given paper for providing feedback to the shops. They slip these into the "consumer comments" pockets on the storefronts. They love reading the feedback from their customers! <3 After wrapping up our shops, students are often left with some extra products. Instead of having them take their own products back home, I let them put another economics concept into practice - BARTERING! They have a blast working out "fair swaps" for their products and really working to get the other things they may have wanted but didn't have the money to purchase...and of course, they do all of this while proudly wearing some of their favorite purchases. :) All in all, it is a fun day of learning. Students take their roles as both producers and consumers seriously and come away with a real sense of accomplishment! If you would like to download this packet of FREE resources to hold your own Economics shop, you can do so HERE. Enjoy!
Research based teaching strategies you can use today with a free printable chart.
A teaching resource that includes dozens of free printables and helpful website links to use in the classroom for elementary and middle school students.
When done well, co-teaching offers benefits for both students and teachers. When not done well, it can be confusing or downright frustrating for all involved.
A four-step approach to using a powerful model that increases student agency in learning.
Guiding inquiry-based learning centers learning on a solving a particular problem or answering a central question.
FREE Minecraft Learning Printables (Various Subjects)
To learn about muscles, look no further than this Inside-Out Anatomy page.
Back to School is right around the corner for us and I am SUPER excited to kick of this school year with some fun, hands-on and engaging resources for The
The past few years I’ve had the opportunity to teach a course entirely through project based learning. Our local university approached a couple of schools in our district and asked us if we were interested in teaching a cross-curricular PBL program where our grade 12 students can earn college credits. Ummmm…. heck yeah! Basically, the ... Read more
Top 10 Evidence Based Teaching Strategies Infographic Most teachers care about their students’ results, and if you are reading this, you are undoubtedly one of them. Research shows that evidence based teaching strategies are likely to have the largest impact on student results. The Top 10 Evidence Based Teaching Strategies will help you discover the […]
HI — I no longer update this page ~ but “MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES in COMICS ED” is available at my NEW COMICS WORKSHOP site HERE >>… ~ Marek … AND ALSO: Psst! Tea…
Do you hate to teach poetry? Do you want your students to learn and enjoy poetry? Try these simple ways to learn how to teach poetry...
You can’t get the most out of university without learning to think critically. It isn't easy, but with our handy guide, we’ll have you thinking up a storm in no time!
This collection of classroom resources covers a wide span of activities for visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learners. There are projects, games, videos, and hands-on crafts that are sure to delight learners of all ages. Students will learn about a wide variety of habitats from Himalayan mountain ranges to cold, brackish waters, and study animals as diverse as the American river otter and the ray-finned fish.
Financially savvy kids are future leaders!
These fun coding books introduce kids to the basics of computer programming and writing their own software.
Got a gardening guru on your hands? Give them a fun challenge with this fill-in-the-blanks quiz about the parts of a seed!
FREEBIE Worksheet, Bell Work, Guided Notes, PowerPoint and Much More to Help you Teach Your Lesson on Simplifying Radicals.
Free essays, homework help, flashcards, research papers, book reports, term papers, history, science, politics
What can run but can't walk? Reveal the answer to this clever riddle by cracking the number code in this Riddles and Codes worksheet.
Hi Everyone! I hope everyone is having a FANTASTIC summer. If you are anything like me, you spent all of June telling yourself summer would last forever, and all of July eyeing everything at the Target Dollar Spot, wondering just HOW much money is too much money to spend there… Well, my classroom is receiving […]
Printable trigonometry worksheets for teachers & kids. Each worksheet is visual, differentiated and fun. Includes a range of useful free teaching resources.
