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Join the fun on Instagram!

💥🧪 Want to grab your students’ attention on day on

📧✏️ have you ever received emails like these from

📧✏️ have you ever received emails like these from your students? 😳 I made this lesson out of pure necessity — I came back from maternity leave halfway through the year and needed a first-day assignment that would help me get to know my new students fast. It worked so well I turned it into a first-week-of-school staple.

Here’s the twist: the examples in the presentation are REAL emails I’ve actually received from students — the good, the bad, and the “wait, what?” Students assess what’s working and what’s not, then get a simple outline of tips for writing a proper email to a teacher. Then, as their assessment, they have to email ME using what they just learned.

I absolutely LOVE reading my students’ thoughtful, well-formatted emails after this lesson. I get to hear about their summer, their goals for the year, how they’re feeling about school starting… it’s such a good way to peek inside their heads on day one.

Grab this one for free — comment EMAIL and I’ll send you right to it! 📩

Do you teach your students how to properly email you? I’d love to know what’s worked for you.

#middleschoolscience #backtoschool #scienceteacher #firstweekofschool freeteachingresource

🔨Teaching about elements, compounds, and mixtures?

🔨Teaching about elements, compounds, and mixtures? I love using these Petri dishes of nuts, bolts, and washers to model:
pure elements
pure compounds
mixtures of elements
mixtures of compounds
and mixtures of elements and compounds

I also teach students the 7 diatomic elements (I Have No Bright Or Clever Friends = Iodine Hydrogen Nitrogen Bromine Oxygen Chlorine Fluorine), which only exist in nature bonded to another element or to “themselves” (petri dish 2).

The Google Form with particle diagrams is the perfect way to check for understanding of this concept!

Comment NUTS or BOLTS and I’ll send you my blog post to read more about this activity!

#middleschoolscience #physicalscienceteacher #matter #teachingscience #chemistryactivity

💡✨First week of school activity that doubles as a

💡✨First week of school activity that doubles as a diagnostic? Yes please.

Students build a name plate... with a working circuit hidden on the back. Get it right, and a tiny LED bulb actually lights up.

But here’s what I really love about it — while they’re building, I get to just watch. Who figures it out. Who has the eureka moment and lights right up (literally). Who perseveres. Who gets creative. Who struggles. Who gives up before they even try.

Day one, and I already know so much about my new class.

Grab the free Light Up Name Plate activity — link in bio!

What do you notice about your students in the first week? Tell me below. 👇

#firstweekofschool #middleschoolscience #stemactivities #scienceteacher #backtoschool

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