Science Notebooks

I felt that I did not utilize the science notebook very well last year. In an effort to see how I could improve that, I found a few good sites that really got me inspired to make the notebook a crucial component in my class. The Scientist Notebook Toolkit was the first site I found and that led me to www.sciencenotebooks.org, which was incredibly informative. I love all the pictures they have of student work because I can show my students what I am expecting from them. The FAQ part of the site was also helpful because it clued me in to some potential problems and how others have dealt with them.

A picture is worth a thousand words...

I really like to use pictures to explain and assess students. I found this site called BIODIDAC that has TONS of images related to biology. All they ask is that you let them know you are using their images and who will benefit from their use. They even accept contributions if you are a good illustrator or photographer!

Atomic Theory Timeline

After a few trials and errors, my students are really making some progress on our Atomic Theory Timeline Wiki. You can see that some of them are plagiarizing and using wikipedia as a source (they were supposed to find two sources BESIDES wikipedia), but it is a start. It is so blatant when they copy and paste- I wonder if they think I won't notice?! They are struggling with trying to condense the information into a nice little packet that will be easy for their classmates to study. I think they might be used to fluffing things up to write a longer paper, and it can be a real challenge to condense a lot of information into a couple choice sentences!

How Stuff Works

I have found another great source of short video clips to give my lessons a touch of tech. How Stuff Works is across the board for all content types... so enjoy!

Chemistry Resource

I am doing an Atomic Theory timeline with my physical science students and have been looking for some great sources online. This site seems to be a "must use" for them- it will really help them meet all the requirements of the assignment!

Teaching Evolution

This was the scariest thing I could think of when I was in teacher preparatory classes. I have taught it a few times already but am not sure how deep to go with my middle school students. The most helpful site I have found so far is from UC Berkely.

DNA Resource Looks Promising

This is from Cold Springs Harbor- home of Barbara McClintock, one of my hero science chicks. They have some great resources for teachers- you can create your own site and lessons within their resources. I think much of it might be a tad high level for my kids, but I might use some of it. The website is www.dnai.org

Teacher's Domain

Yikes! Two in one night... couldn't help it. This one is awesome if you are trying to incorporate more technology into the classroom. It has TONS of interactive flash animations from NOVA and I am sure a plethora of other things that I don't have time to delve into...

I want to Collect Spiders!

I found this great site that has some cool lesson plans for biology from the Biology Project at the University of Arizona. I think my favorite is the spider collecting unit. These pictures were drawn by the creator of the lesson, Debora Scheidemante. Props to you, girl... I like your style :-)

Our Little Mitosis Project

So I thought it would be neat to make movies about mitosis using the manipulation kits we use in class to learn the phases of mitosis. We took digital pictures and then used Windows Movie Maker to create short films. You can see our results on TeacherTube.com if you search "mitosis manipulatives."

Can you roll your tongue? I found some great lesson plans at this website from the University of Utah.

ONline Graphing Tool!

Just found this little treasure- an online graphing tool that allows students to create a multitude of graphs and then email or download them in various formats. I think it will be nice simply for ease of access!

Biology Corner

This site has been a great help to me this first year of teaching! I can usually find some worthwhile stuff on here when I am in a pinch...

Gas Law Java

I have been teaching the properties and laws of gases to the 8th graders. We are going to do some graphs to show each of the gas laws and I wanted to find some neat Java applications that would show the relationships between temperature, pressure, and volume. It turns out there are quite a few so I am going to put them all out there for the students and have them let me know which one they prefer. Here is what I have so far:

Oklahoma State
University of Oregon
Ohio State
University of Colorado

There is also a company that has some free software available for running a multitude of science applets.

Screencast-O-Matic

I just found out about this and it totally "rox my sox" as the middle-schoolers would say! I was able to create a little movie of my computer screen as I talked my students through how to sign on to their account and access important information for class. I do this with the LCD projector on a regular basis, but it is nice to have the ability to create a series of tutorials for the students. I might try and do this for next year as I think it will save lots of time that was spent getting the kids to sign up. They had a paper to read as they worked through it, but I have found that showing them first, and then letting them do it goes much faster and they have far fewer questions about the process.

Mitosis on YouTube

I am getting ready to tackle Cell Division so I have put together a playlist of helpful videos from YouTube. I would love to see my kids make some of these, but right now the access to technology is an extremely limiting factor. I will, however, have them manipulate chromosomes and spindle fibers until this is stuck in their brains!

Movie Day!

We've all had those days- either we need to catch up, the kids need a break, or we have not enough time to start something big and just enough time that we need to do something worthwhile. Here's a link to several worksheets that go along with movies.

Great Worksheets for Middle School!

This site has lots of great worksheets and experiments! Thanks to M. Poarch at science-class.net

Great Biology Print-outs

I found this site while trying to find a good diagram of a paramecium eating. Turns out it has a bunch of really cool stuff! Go check it out!
Biology-Resources.com

Concept Mapping

I found some great FREEware that allows you to create concept maps and export them as pdf or jpeg or a bunch of other file formats I didn't recognize. Its called Cmap Tools and you can download a version for whatever operating system you use.