Teaching Students Organizational Skills Teaching students organizational skills is critical and will stay with students long after their time in your classroom. I have often had alumni students come back to tell me how much they appreciated my “forcing them“ to do proper Cornell notes and to keep an organized notebook. They tell me that…
A Day in My Life Using Digital Science Notebooks Are you contemplating using highly engaging, digital science notebooks in your classroom? Do you need convincing? I’ve been teaching middle school science for 30+ years and the last decade I’ve been using digital notebooks. I have zero interest in going back to messy, spiral notebooks…
End of Year Science Teacher Reflections As a science teacher, it is powerful to use end of year teacher reflections to review successes and areas needing improvement. I strongly believe that the first few days, after the school year ends, should be spent analyzing and evaluating. End of school reflections don’t take much time, but…
Tips For Success as a New Middle School Science Teacher Are you looking for some tips for success as a new middle school science teacher? Where do you start? It can be incredibly overwhelming to step into a new classroom, a new curriculum, new students, a rigorous schedule and high expectations! I still vividly remember…
72 Tips Your College Never Told You About Being A Teacher What your college never told you about teaching is a lot! Are you a newer teacher? You have probably realized that teachers are basically expected to “learn on the job” in many essential areas. Unless you have a full time mentor teacher, it can…
Teaching Students About Their Individual Affect on Air Pollution Do your students understand their individual effect on air pollution? Are you teaching about the human impact on the environment(MS-ESS3-3) for Earth Day? Are your students finding it hard to relate to such an abstract and, let’s face it, invisible type of pollution? Teaching science, especially…
Teaching Students About the Threat of Invasive Species Do your students understand the threat of invasive species? Are you doing a unit on how biological components of an ecosystem affect populations(MS-LS2-4 or HS-LS2-7)? Students may be surprised to learn that some of the “local animals”, that they grew up with, are actually non native! I…
Inspiring Middle School Students to Minimize Their Impact on Municipal Waste Do your students have any idea of their personal impact on municipal waste? Are you introducing a unit on human impact as part of the NGSS standard MS-ESS3? Let’s start the unit with relatable scenarios. Your mom asks you to clean your bedroom. You…
Design Water Filters With This Exciting STEM Project! Are you looking for a cheap and exciting STEM project for your students to design water filters? Are you teaching the standards of MS-ESS3-3 and MS-ETS1-2 while covering water pollution? This is a very low budget project that can be made into a very engaging and fun…
How to Cheaply Teach Chemical Reactions to Middle School Have you been reluctant to teach chemistry reactions in your middle school classroom because of the cost? Do you think of chemistry as being only done in an expensively equipped high school lab? I have found some ways to teach chemical reactions in my classroom that…
