How to Have a Positive Relationship with Parents Keeping a positive relationship with parents of your students is probably the most difficult part of teaching. One upset parent can cause you to have unnecessary anxiety and stress and make it difficult to focus on your class. After teaching for over 35 years, and dealing with…
Use Backwards Lesson Planning to Create Science Labs Do you struggle with balancing time during labs and hands-on activities? Have you tried backwards lesson planning to create your science labs? I have mentioned this method in several of my blog posts, but I thought it would be helpful to focus only on this method to…
Teaching a Unit on Newton’s Laws of Motion Are you teaching a unit on Newton’s Laws of Motion as part of your MS- PS2–1 or MS- PS2–2? Are you struggling to come up with ideas to help students understand how the laws apply to their everyday life? My focus, during my two to three week unit…
12 Ways to Use Sort Cards in the Science Classroom Do you need some ways to use sort cards in the science room to get the students engaged while learning concepts? I used to believe that matching sort game cards were for the younger classes. Once I started using them with my middle school students,…
Build an Interactive Student Food Web! Are you looking for a fun way to teach food webs that is guaranteed to be engaging? Grab some scissors, some yarn, and some plant and animal food chain pages, from your chosen ecosystem, and turn your class into a giant, interactive student food web! Prepare to Build Your…
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…
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…
Are you looking for a super engaging, STEM symbiosis project, for teaching MS-LS2-2? Are you covering patterns of interactions and relationships?
How to Overcome Math Phobia in Science Class! Do your students have math phobia? When you’re introducing an equation or a calculation, in science class, do they freeze up? Are students having trouble applying what they are learning in math class to your science class? Many students, who love science, are not so fond of…
First Day of School in Middle School Science What do you do on the first day of middle school science? What do you need to cover to be successful for the rest of the year? I have experimented with many different approaches to the first day of school in middle school science for over thirty…
