In this post, I’m sharing activities and resources for teaching one of my very favorite topics — Geologic History! This includes the rock record, geologic time scale, mass extinction events, and how we can piece together the Earth’s extremely long history. Concepts of the fossil…
Plastic in the ocean is a growing problem. It’s essential for science teachers to educate their students about the issue. Approximately nine million tons of plastic waste end up in the ocean each year. As a teacher in a coastal state, I feel a particular…
I was so proud when in June 2020 my state of New Jersey became the FIRST state in the country to adopt cross-disciplinary climate change education standards for grades K through 12. I agreed with our legislators that as educators, we have an obligation to…
Plate Tectonics has grown to be one of my favorite Earth Science units to teach. This is the first ‘nitty gritty’ unit that I teach during the school year. I find that once students understand the dynamics of this incredible phenomenon, they can think BIG…
Someone recently reached out to me asking about my top lab equipment essentials for teaching middle school science. I thought this would be a good blog post! I know that I used to struggle every year when it came time to select supplies with our…
Kids are fascinated by the mysterious and terrifying Great White Shark! For this fun digital graphing project, your middle school students will create digital graphs of real Great White Shark data. They will collect their data from the amazing website Ocearch. What is Ocearch? Ocearch…
A couple of years ago, I started writing my lesson plans using the 5E instructional model. IT WAS A GAME CHANGER! Something about scrapping those ‘old school’ teacher terms of “anticipatory set”, “input”, “independent practice”, etc. helped me to plan more fun and interesting lessons.…
The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) ask us as science teachers to provide anchoring phenomena, opportunities for real-world application of concepts, and flexibility to allow students to follow their own curiosities while learning science. They are asking us to learn with our students and to…
When I was in elementary school I was obsessed with the idea of space and astronauts. I remember consistently requesting permission from my 4th grade teacher for my best friend and me to be allowed to go to the library for recess instead of out…
