Science tips

So I just wanted to find a bunch of science tips! So here are a bunch I found.

1. Spend extra time in preparing your daily lessons to think of some unique (and startling) way to make the lesson memorable. Do something which reaches all the senses. Remember, your goal as a teacher is for your students to remember and understand.

2. Organization is the key to being a successful teacher.

3. Don't hold back your gifted students,challenge them inside and outside the class.

4. Try to change activities every 15-30 minutes, on average. Especially if you teach a Block Schedule. Labs run longer, of course, as do some written assignments. But you could break that up with a game in the middle! Go from quiet to noisy, from individual to pairs, to teams to lab groups, and back to pairs or individual.

5. Put a fun trivia question (scienceon the board during the first few minutes of class. Give a little prize for the correct answer

6. Learn some simple sleight-of-hand magic, or get some easy-to-use special effect devices from a magic shop, practice your presentation, then DO it in class in an appropriate context to make a point about your current topic

I hope some of these were helpful, I liked a few.

How do I keep my students engaged in a topic they don't care about?

As I began researching my question I came across an abundance of information. Some of the information suprised me and some I expected to see. Many articles and websites mentioned that as a teacher and always a student who is constantly learning, teachers have to put themselves in the position of their students. They must understand what the students are going through and question themselves often on whether or not they would be interested in the topic and how it is being taught. This is an important issue I have not spent much time thinking about, but is one of the utmost importance. How can we ask our students to engage in an activity if we would not even want to participate or care about it ourselves?

Many other articles mention that students often focus on their grades rather than what they are learning. In order for students to really want to learn and participate in a lesson/activity, we must emphasize the lesson itself, not the assessment and grade. Students spend a great deal of time focusing on how to get the best grade possible or how to just slide by, when they are forgetting the true meaning of what they are being taught. By keeping lessons and activities exciting and hands on, we keep students engaged and interested. It is also important to have them be involved and ask questions of them often.

Another important idea brought up in numerous articles was to make the information being taught relevant to their lives. I know it is a daily question of students to ask their teachers why they have to do something or why they need to know something. By making the information connect to their real lives, it allows them to go further in their thinking and analyze how it can relate to their world.

How to make science fun for me and the students.

I want my science students to have fun in class but I also want my students to learn the process of science.  I want to challenge their thinking and reasoning ability.  In doing so, I do not want class to be too hard or too difficult for the students.  I want my students to learn and enjoy science. 

I have always loved my science classes in grade school, middle school and especially in high school.  Since I graduated from high school in 1983, we had no Internet or even computers to help us in science.  We did a lot of hands on applications and a lot of thinking and reasoning.  I had a blast in my classes so I have a desire to make my classes fun and exciting.  And hopefully challenging at the same time.

My main focus of this blog is to find fun activities that enhances science and challenges the student's thinking.  Of course I want these classes to be fun.  I did some looking around on the Internet and found a cool website.  This web site is titled Steve Spangler Science, Making Science Fun.  There is a great experiment on this page titled Light Sticks.  Most kids I know love light sticks and since it is getting closer to Halloween, it seems like a great experiment. 

There are a lot of experiments on this web page.  The experiment's are broken down by grade levels.  The experiments are explained well and there is added information about the experiments that you could use for extensions. 

I think the students would find this experiment to be a lot of fun.

What resources are available for professional development?

I forgot to mention in my introduction, that I don't consider myself highly knowledgeable in the area of science. That is why I have decided to research what resources are out there to help teachers stay informed (Or for some of us GET informed). Going into this class I think I assumed I would probably be given materials to teach and that those would be just fine. But, because of all we have learned about how to teach effectively, I realize that whatever materials I am supplied with probably won't amount to an effective science lesson. For this reason, I will be spending the next few weeks looking for places to turn to when I need to better understand concepts, I need ideas for lessons, or I  would like something new to think about.


One website I came across is the National Science Teachers Association. The first thing I noticed was the association’s motto "Committed to promoting excellence and innovation in science teaching and learning for all". I like this motto because it doesn't just suggest the website is for teachers, but for anyone interested in learning. I also read that the websites member's include not only teachers, but also science supervisors, administrators, business representatives, and others involved in the science field. I get the feeling that many knowledgeable individuals (not just in the field of science alone) are involved with this association.


The website suggested a number of events for profession development.  The National Science Teachers Association holds a science education conference every year. The conference includes 100's of workshops and demonstrations for what appears to be a wide variety of grade levels and science areas. The website also lists locations for the associations learning centers. Where one on one demonstrations and meetings take place.


Honestly, I'm not sure that I would ever take advantage of a national conference. However, becoming a member of the association grants the user access to several searchable data bases, grade-specific journals and newsletters, lesson plans, and book discounts. It is not free, but for new teachers it is only $34 a year. I think this site would definitely be helpful for beginning teachers in the science field. Also, this site is a great FREE resource for a variety of science literature. The site has a bookstore that carries all types of science materials. I think referring to the site's online store could spark a lot of ideas, even if I didn't purchase anything.

How can we make science fun for EVERY student?

I decided to look into how we, as teachers, can make science more fun for every student and to find methods to help those who dread science class learn to get hooked. I was excited to find a few ideas that really piqued my interest.

A few articles I found talked about having a current events portion of class once a week. Most of us have seen current events done in a social studies classroom and it is not much different when done with science ideas in mind. Students can cut newspaper articles out and find things online that explain a recent event in the science field. Students then have to bring the article to class and explain it to their peers. This could also be done on a daily basis, especially if your students have blocked science time.

Something I am very curious to use in my clinical classroom is the idea of a weekly or daily scientist. Each day/week a student researches a science fact that has to do with what content is being taught. He or she shares it with the class and the class begins to ask questions. If the weekly/daily scientist knows the answer, they can share it with the class but if it is a deeper question than the scientist came prepared for, it is written on the science question board and can be used as an experiment-starter, to give ideas to students who are "stuck" and can also be a point for other weekly/daily scientists to research and find a fun fact about.

Bottom line is that as science teachers, we need to get creative with our thinking! We have vast resources at our fingertips (the internet) and it is full of great ideas: games, ways to encourage and motivate, ways to involve science vocabulary in everything you do, and ways to engage our students.

Until next week...

***edit - here's the link to the website I used to find this information: http://www.science.org/category/teaching ***

How can science be tied into other subjects?

How can science be tied into other subjects?

Science lessons can overlap with other subject's lessons. For instance during science you could integrate math into your lesson by having students measure out their supplies or doing formulas to figure out their data. For instance if you were doing an experiment of what liquid plants grow the best in water, milk, soda, or coffee, you could have your students measure the day to day growth of the plants. Then as they collect more data (depending on the ability level of your students) you could have your students complete math formulas using their data to figure out what liquid plants grow the best in.

You could also incorporate reading and writing into your science lessons. There are many famous scientists throughout the world. You could have your student's research a scientist and make a brochure about them. By doing this your students will be reading and writing will learning about science.

Twittering geobern @ #scichat

Well, I just had my first Twitter experience on #scichat.  WOW.  My twitter experience is very similar to my blogging experience, basically nonexistant!  But I survived and managed to squeeze in about 8 tweets.  The conversation felt disjointed, and I hated that I have to update my page constantly.  I kept thinking that there must be a setting on my computer that automatically refreshes.....but do not have the time to figure it out.  Also, I kept getting a security message, that I am sure I could dismiss...again time is NOT on my side!   But, I will be back again...not only because it is required for my class, but because, I have a need to succeed!!

So I twittered... I tweeted.  The subject was about evidence-based teaching.  What is evidence?  We use evidence every day to derive conclusions.  The evidence suggests that if I hit my finger with a hammer, it is going to hurt.  Sometimes good evidence leads to the wrong conclusions.   We had no idea about plate tectonics 45+ years ago.  We based our ideas on observations and came up with geosynclines to explain exotic terrances and other continental features.   But we need evidence to back our observations and to explain our questions.  Sometimes we draw wrong conclusions from the evidence we gather, but if we persist, we hopefully will come to the right conclusions.

Teaching students to question their world and to gather evidence to derive a conclusion is key.