Ideas, strategies, and resources that can make teaching easier and more efficient.
In Where’s Your Blind Spot, students learned about spots in their retinas that don’t sense light and information is not sent to the brain.
What if you use two eyes to look across a room but one eye is looking through a cardboard tube?
How does the tube change what you see?
Are you teaching light or optics in your physics class or point of view and showing respect towards others during a class discussion? This activity may be just what you need!
What does it mean to have a blind spot?
Why is it important to be aware of your own blind spots?
This activity easily extends from primary grades to high school…
Enjoy free resources you can add to your Thanksgiving collection!
Share with a colleague, leave one or two in your sub folder, maybe have a few available for those extra minutes at the end of an activity or for the student who finishes early. This can be a busy time of year both professionally and personally and having optional activities (from many different levels) can take a lot of stress off teaching around the holiday…
Activities, with a few suggestions, to add to your resources for teaching light. I presented this information at a workshop at the OSTAstate conference. The Evidence Statement for NGSS 1-PS4-2 suggests observations in a dark room, a pinhole box, or a video of a cave explorer. Objects in darkness can be seen only when illuminated. I don’t have those resources available so I cut a small hole in one end of a box and asked a child to look through the hole and tell me what is seen in the box. He can’t see anything because there’s so little light in the box …
Here’s a great collection of activities, with explanations and elaborations, that I hope will enrich your resources for teaching sound. I presented this information at a workshop at the OSTA state conference. One example in the Evidence Statement for NGSS 1-PS4-1 suggests using a tuning fork to show vibration. That’s a fun demonstration and you might add to the demo by showing a slow motion video of a vibrating tuning fork that touches water. Another video you might choose was created by the SloMo Guys. I like their videos but suggest you turn off the sound and discuss what’s seen because …
You’ll find this inexpensive product at my TpT store – students balance a butterfly. It can be a quick science activity, a take home activity, or an event for a family science night. Maybe you need an activity to add to your sub folder? You’ll need some cardstock, scissors, and pennies with tape or large paperclips. My product includes a PowerPointâ„¢ with copyright-free images of balancing objects. If you just need a pattern, you can find it here. Students could easily extend the activity using a bit of imagination and an index card to create a new object that balances easily. Then they share their …
It seems there are many at PBS who enjoy the month of Halloween like I do. Check out fourteen different fun lesson plans and videos that focus on math, problem solving, science, social studies, and literature using Halloween as the theme for kids PreK-12!
My FAVORITE month of the year. We’ve gotten to know each other, routines are familiar, and it’s time for a project that we work on during the month of October. I posted a great product at TpT that I hope you’ll check out along with these other great resources. Your students will be reading, writing, solving math puzzles, and more with a monster theme. Monster and Alien Coloring Pages – add this to your sub folder? Easy Ways to Draw a Monster – get your hesitant artists started Free Halloween Clip Art – so much to choose! Monster Songs for Young Children – …
Astronaut Don Pettit created a series of videos called Saturday Morning Science that you’ll want to check out! He performs experiments, usually with water, in microgravity on the International Space Station. This resource could work for children of any age.
Here’s a channel with a short version of each video. My kids especially like seeing what happens when you add an effervescent tablet to a large bubble of water, how you can “eat” tea with chopsticks, and the behavior of a bubble of water in a bubble of air inside a bubble of water.
Let me make it easier if you’re planning to teach about the different kinds of rocks. I’ve created a product* that includes a website <= just click on this link and you’ll find activities, vocabulary, idioms, and suggestions for non-fiction books to add to your Earth science unit. * Included in the product: copyright free images, a glossary in English and Spanish, short texts that have been recorded, word walls with two sizes of paper and both English and Spanish terms, math worksheets for practicing basic computation, mazes, rules and game boards for playing mancala, and writing prompts.