I made this Google Slides presentation to make sure my middle school students know about the historic May 30 flight of American astronauts on the first commercial flight to space. Also, many people are not aware of NASA’s Artemis program – the new mission to put people on the moon in 2024 with the purpose of eventually sending people to Mars!
Our students today are the Artemis Generation, but they don’t know it yet! Educate your students about it with this free presentation…
With DISTANCE LEARNING I wasn’t able to do the hands-on electrical circuits lab with my wonderful 8th graders so I had to come up with another way for them to learn the basics. A web search brought me to this really cool VIRTUAL circuit builder that does NOT use Flash – which is awesome because Flash is no longer supported by Chrome.
Here’s a brief video of how this Phet interactive works.
My worksheet guides students in
constructing series and parallel
circuits using the Phet interactive.
No prep required – just have
students watch the video above so
they know how to attach/detach
components.
Many of my students struggle with solving basic physics formula, and most of all, in understanding which units go with the answer to the question being asked.
Is this familiar to you… The question ask for “HOW LONG does it take for the skateboarder to roll 25 meters while moving at 2 m/s?”, and the student answers 12.5 m/s!!!
Students MIGHT use the right equation (time = speed/distance) , but the answer nearly NEVER has the right units – the question is about time or distance and no matter what the student puts “m/s” as part of the answer! Mind boggling to one degree, but this is all new for them and it’s normal to have trouble applying old skills to new problems.
PROBLEM (nearly) SOLVED!
The first formula is use in my 8th grade physics class is the equation for speed (or velocity). I have found that by guiding my students through the process of choosing the formula, writing the formula, and forcing them to pay attention to the units involved through this graphic organizer, greatly improves their success!
See MORE about SPEED SQUARES here.
I also have created DENSITY SQUARES and I’m working on making resources for all of the formulas I use in my science classes.
I wanted my 7th graders to make cell models this school year, but I didn’t want everyone just making the same thing so I searched the internet for a variety of labeled pictures so that the students could make a variety of cell types.
Send me an email at generationscience3@gmail.com if you’d like more information about how I did this activity, including a rubric.
If you don’t have any supplies for studying minerals, my experience suggests that the following mineral specimens and supplies provides you with the least amount of materials you need for hands-on activities.
Mineral Samples
I chose these three because you get a variety of mineral properties for low cost. Talc is a cheap replacement for graphite and fluorite can work in place of hematite for a middle level hardness, although its luster and streak are the same as quartz.
| Mineral | Hardness | Streak | Luster |
| graphite | 1.5-2 | black | submetallic |
| red hematite | 5-6 | red-brown | earthy |
| quartz | 7 | white | glassy |
Additional Supplies
With these supplies your students can make observations and practice testing minerals for streak and hardness.
Need a Lab Worksheet?
Bats are birds. Snakes eat grass. Insects aren’t animals. Nature knowledge seems to be at an all time low among my own students.
In response, I designed two food web activities to simulate connections between a diverse set of organisms that actually interact in nature.
The 12 cards look like these below – sun, 4 plants and 6 animals
The cards can be used for many activities, such as constructing this food web:
Both activities includes directions and worksheets for students to..
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Students construct their own using a great online resource that provides predator/prey information for a variety of forest (Eastern, mid-Atlantic) organisms.
Hands-on learning is an important part of science education, but it can be miserable for you and for many of the students if your class lacks lab behavioral expectations that are taught and enforced.
At the beginning of the school year I take the time to explicitly teach and model behavioral expectations for working in a group and/or lab activity. Why this is essential:
Teach, demonstrate and practice lab rules and procedures. Believe in their power to promote learning (they do NOT diminish fun, they stop chaos!). Rules are meaningless without (emotion-free) enforcement.
There are two parts to me enforcing lab behavioral expectations:
Students are told that they are being graded and each category is explained. They understand that they begin with 10 points and lose a point (or sometimes 1/2 a point) when they break a lab rule or are showing lack of effort and teamwork.
Should I give a warning first? My recommendation is to not give a warning before taking off a point. I have found that the best way for students to take me seriously regarding my expectations is to for me to be serious about my behavior rubric. As soon as I see an off-task behavior I quickly (but respectfully) point it out and take away a point. This usually results in the particular student staying on-task the rest of the time and everyone else getting the message.
So, my recommendation for Better Science Teaching – Set Expectations – Teach Expectations – Enforce Expectations
Here I share how I teach a 7th grade lab on finding protists and microscopic animals in pond water. This may seem daunting if you are not familiar with the organisms or haven’t had the time to organize the activity. I hope that I’ll give you all the information you need for a successful lab.
Why take the time for this lab? Well, no one is going to be excited about algae by looking at a picture of it. Algae in the macroscopic world is called POND SCUM, but under the microscope it’s BEAUTIFUL.
Also, many standards can be addressed in a pond dip lab:
The supplies are simple and usually found in the typical middle school or high school biology classroom. The only things you will need to gather otherwise is the microorganism-rich water and organism keys; I provide you with information on both.
The first time I looked for examples of graphs and graphing lessons on the internet I was disappointed to that most of them graphed low-value data such as favorite colors, colors of cars, colors of socks (there’s a bit of an obsession with colors), favorite pets and favorite foods. Maybe this is fine for K-2, but using high-value data while teaching graphing levels-up your lessons.
After wasting a lot of time searching I eventually realized that weather websites provide a wealth of up-to-date data that is meaningful both personally and educationally to my students and extremely easy to access.
Two websites that I use are Weather.com and Weather Underground.
Both websites allow you to see weather data for cities and towns around the world. There are more options than I can list in how you can use these data for graphing and analysis while also learning about weather.
You can access other interesting data sets if you click on “More Forecasts” on weather.com:
Click HERE for my “Graphing with Content” resources, including a link to a free first lesson. My series of 5 lessons walk the students through the steps of creating line and bar graphs.
If you know of any other easy to access data sets please share in the comments.
This post was first published on my Generation Science blog.
One of my favorite education authors (Daniel Willingham) points out in his book, Why Don’t Students Like School?, that students’ study skills should not be assumed. Anyone who’s been teaching a few years (maybe a few weeks) knows that study skills and study habits are definitely on a spectrum. I’ve got the kids who memorize everything and their polar opposites, who study nothing. Some of this is about habits and motivation. Thankfully there are those students who just want to do well and whether it’s natural skill or help at home, they are able to assimilate a lot of information and skills and can show off their learning quite well on exams.
But what about everyone else? Over the last couple of years, I have built even more review (aka informative assessments) into my lessons. I think frequent quizzes and what I call graded reviews are a good way to do this. However, I know from my research on the topic that I also need to explicitly teach study skills. Flashcards are one of the most effective study techniques out there and the subject of biology is a great one for learning to use them. Therefore, I assigned making flashcards to my 7th graders as part of their preparation for a quiz on the 6 kingdoms of life.
I told the students the following: “For this unit, you are required to make at least 12 flashcards on the kingdoms’ notes. The flashcards can be physical (index cards) or on Quizlet”. Now comes my very stupid mistake, I asked, “Does everyone know how to make flashcards?” Lots of head nodding and yeses followed. I can’t believe I fell for that!
The one smart thing I did do was make the flashcards a graded assignment and, therefore, I looked at all of them. I was so happy to see the many “shared” Quizlet sets in my email and the pile of index cards on my desk. Sadly, this feeling was quickly replaced with despair as I read card after card that had nothing whatsoever to do with our kingdoms’ notes! Or, if they did have to do with the notes, ALL OF THE NOTES WERE ON ONE CARD! Before I could confront my students about this, I had to mentally run through the stages of grief to prepare myself. Once I got over the shock, pain, anger and depression I was able to move back into problem-solving mode and just view this as an opportunity to teach my 7th graders how to make and use flashcards – which is what I should have done in the first place!
In retrospect it was helpful for them to make the cards incorrectly, because “mistakes are the best teachers”. This was holding true for me in this instance and for the students. Here are the steps I took to rectify our mistakes:
1. I thanked the students for making their flashcards, everyone had done so by the due date.
2. I asked them, what material is this quiz on? Everyone (more or less) could tell me that the quiz is on the 6 kingdoms. However, through discussion it became clear that some didn’t quite seem to realize that the quiz was specifically ONLY on the notes on the 6 kingdoms. It can be mind-boggling how some students are so clueless about what is going on. We had been studying the kingdoms for two weeks. We have very specific notes on the kingdoms that were taken on specific graphic organizers in their notebooks. The daily review questions were ONLY on these notes. Yet, somehow, some students didn’t quite realize that this is the material that they needed to know for the quiz! This is where deep breathing techniques are helpful and reminding my adult self that 7th graders are only about 13 years-old and lack the life experience and brain development to think like I do. What seems so obvious to me is not so obvious to all of them. There are the students whom never miss a beat (and thank God for them), but the rest are children that need explicit, direct instruction in almost everything and it’s my job to realize this.
3. I asked my students to open their notebooks to the kingdoms’ notes and calmly, with a smile, pointed out that the quiz is on these notes and only these notes; therefore, the flashcards needed to be specifically on these notes.
4. Step 4 is critical – I asked my students, what is the purpose of flashcards? This got to the heart of my biggest mistake which was assuming that they knew this! Again, through a brief discussion, we came to an understanding that the point of making the flashcards was so that they would use them to study for this quiz. No, this was not obvious to everyone, and, I should have known better to assume that it was.
5. I presented incorrect flashcards on the smart board – I pulled some from the Quizlet sets and some were photographs of physical ones (only a couple of each were enough to make my point). I asked, what is wrong with each card. Funny how easily they could point out the mistakes of others! Here are the mistakes that I highlighted:
6. I presented how to correctly make the flashcards for the quiz. Using Quizlet, I made a card on the board that had all the correct elements. The clue was “all are autotrophs” and the answer was “plants”. One clue with one answer – not one clue with 15 answers. I made one more, “all are heterotrophs”, with the answer, “animals and fungi”. I started to have one of those great moments in teaching when you can sense little light bulbs turning on in my students’ heads. The explicit, direct instruction was working! Duh!
7. I asked students to suggest clues and answer for a few more cards and their responses were right on target.
8. I reassigned the cards – everyone had to remake cards for tomorrows class during which we would practice using them.
9. I checked the new Quizlet sets before class and quickly thumbed through the sets of physical cards and was pleased with the results – all were correctly made! A moment of euphoria for a teacher.
10. I demonstrated how to use the cards with a volunteer. Based on her responses we made three piles of cards.
11. I told students to pair up and to do the same with a set of cards. Since about half had their cards on Quizlet, I paired those with physical cards with those with Quizlet sets. In retrospect, I will require physical cards for this lesson in the future and Quizlet can be used after they know how to do this correctly. Only one student read the clues and the other answered. This does result in both students studying and we did have some time to switch later on. The point here is to teach HOW to use the cards.
12. I demonstrated how to study the cards in pile # 3 (the “I almost know it” pile). Demonstrating is the key here. I asked my volunteer the clue and if she was still uncertain or completely incorrect, I had her repeat the correct answer several times. I showed that once the student truly knew the information then that card could be moved into pile # 1. Students practiced this for a couple of minutes.
13. I instructed the students to pick two cards from pile # 2 and have the student repeat the correct answers several times.
14. I instructed students to hold onto these two cards and then pick five cards from pile # 1. I had them shuffle these cards and then practice with them for two minutes. Since we still had a few minutes I had them switch roles.
15. I assigned studying with the cards as homework AND I sent an email to their parents explaining the assignment. I think this is critical. Flashcards can easily be used alone, but I wanted to increase the odds of my students doing the studying and using them correctly by including a family member. I know not every family helped their 7th grader study, but many did I and I could fully see this in the quiz grades.
Here is the email that I sent:
Dear 7th grade parents,
7th graders are learning how to use flashcards to study. Flashcards are proven to be one of the most effective study techniques.
Students had two options for using flashcards:
To help your 7th grader study for Friday’s quiz, please consider doing the following:
It’s important that 7th graders learn the value of this study technique so I appreciate your support with this. We practiced using them correctly in class on Tuesday.
Quiz results: The scores were overall really good on this quiz. Of course, I still had a handful of students who only earned a D or an F. I talked with these students individually about whether they did the studying and all admitted to not doing it. This is the tough part for us teachers – we cannot control what happens when they leave our classrooms and it is very important to accept this fact. However, I can do what I can do so I required that the students have their paper signed by a parent. We talked about being honest about the lack of studying and getting the signature. All students did so and on-time which was quite the treat!
Take away: Nine years of teaching does not mean I will not still make assumptions about what my students are thinking. But more importantly, remember that “mistakes are the best teachers” and use this truism to your advantage. I’ll require that another group of students make flashcards and I plan to do it the same way, but without the personal grief because I will expect them to make mistakes.
Flashcard Resources:
How to study with flashcards: The 3-pile method
Other teachers have been my best resource for improving my teaching so please share your experiences with teaching study techniques in the comments section below.
