My Classroom & Science Lab

Lung Models

As we study the respiratory system, the movement of the diaphragm can be confusing for students.  This year, I decided to make a model with them using a cup, balloons, and straws.  We built the models together and they worked in pairs to determine which organ was represented by each part of the model. After the models were labeled, I taught students how to use them.  Each time your diaphragm contracts, it gives your lungs more space to expand and fill with air.  This can be seen as you pull the stretched balloon down and the lungs fill up with air.  These models gave students a visual to help them understand how the diaphragm works.  Next time I make these models with students, I will try to plug the top opening with clay.  In some models, the cut at the top of the cup was too large so the lungs did not fill up with enough air to clearly see it.

Barometers

In the sixth grade science, we just wrapped up out chapter on the atmosphere.  As part of that chapter, we focused on altitude, density of air, and air pressure.  We learned that a barometer can be used to measure the air pressure.  Students worked in small groups to build a model mercury barometer.  They used a 1 liter bottle, water, a pipet, and clay.  Students filled the bottle half way with water and put the pipet in enough to touch the water, but not the bottom of the bottle.  Then they secured the pipet while plugging the bottle with clay.  To simulate air pressure, students lightly squeezed the bottle.  As they did, the water level rose just like the mercury would in a barometer.

Life of an Oxygen Molecule

This year I have a really great group of writers.  Many of them love creative writing especially when they can incorporate dialogue!  I try to take advantage of this whenever I can.  As we studied the respiratory system in science, we talked about how oxygen moves through your body and how the respiratory system works closely with circulatory system.  To assess their understanding, student personified an oxygen molecule and wrote a short story about its journey through the body.  I gave them a list of words that must be included to help guide their story.

Illinois State Learning Standards:
12.A.4b. Describe the structures and organization of cells and tissues that underlie basic life functions including nutrition, respiration, cellular transport, biosynthesis, and reproduction.

Floatin' Boats

Eighth grade students had the opportunity to build boats out of tin foil, straws, and tape.  After their boats were completed, they added pennies to see how much weight their boats could hold.  Next time I do this activity, I will give students less tin foil because some boats were very successful and we almost ran out of pennies!  This activity really helped students understand how density, buoyancy, and surface area affect an object's ability to float.  You might notice that one boat has a balloon inside it.  A couple groups wanted to model their boat off canoes.  We discussed how some canoes have hollow areas to help it float.

The Heart and Blood Flow

Personally, I think understanding the flow of blood can be very challenging for students especially when they are just learning the parts of the heart.  To introduce the parts of the heart, I create a bulletin board display in my classroom.  Students label the parts of the heart with a wet erase marker.  Then we use the diagram to draw arrows that indicate the pathway of blood flow.  We also add facts about each side of the heart.  I like using the bulletin board because students can always look and refer to it.

Illinois State Standards:
12.A.4b.  Describe the structures and organization of cells and tissues that underlie basic life functions including nutrition, respiration, cellular transport, biosynthesis, and reproduction.

What's a meter squared?

I tutor 4th, 6th, 7th, and 8th grade students in math.  As I was working with my sixth graders on area, it became clear to me that they did not actually understand what one meter squared was.  To them it was just a unit, a letter with an exponent.  At that point I took out a meter stick and a piece of chalk.  I explained to them that a meter squared was simply a square that was a meter long on each side.  So I had them take the meter stick and the piece of chalk and begin to draw a squared meter on my classroom floor.  From there, I had the students estimate the area of my classroom is squared meters.  In this short tutoring session, it became clear how important visuals and hands on activities are for students. It makes their learning experience much more meaningful.

Discounts & Markups

Of course when teaching percents and decimals, a major application is discounts and markups.  Although students see sales and discounts daily, many of them do not know how to calculate them.  I put a lot of focus on this lesson because it is such a practical skill that students will use for the rest of their lives.  This year, I borrowed an idea I found on Pinterest, which of course I cannot find now.
 Students had to create their own store and make an advertisement for five products.  On their advertisement they were required to list the product, a picture, an original selling price, and a discount (in the form of a percent).  In addition to their advertisement, they needed to provide an answer key with the new sale prices based on the discounts.  The next day, I hung up their advertisements and during class they got to "shop."  They filled out a sheet of their purchases on which they calculated how much money they saved.  The students liked this even more than I expected and were engaged for the entire activity.  I will definitely be doing this activity again!

Common Core Math Standards:

7.RP.2.c Represent proportional relationships by equations.

Electrical Circuits & Jitterbugs

Eighth graders have been studying electricity and for the first time, I have the material (very few) to have student create their own series and parallel circuits.  First the class watched a video about how they are set up and the differences between the two.  Then, after being assigned a reading, students worked in a small group to build their own series and parallel circuits.  This made it so much more meaningful for the students.

Now, we are working on Jitterbugs.  I will post the link to the lesson plan and of course post pictures of our final products!

The Jitterbugs went well this year; this class was very creative.  The only thing was this year we used motors with wires and leads already connected.  At first I thought this would be a good thing because students wouldn't have to strip the wires of the alligator clips.  However, it was not a good thing when it came to our Jitterbug competition.  After all the Jitterbugs were completed, we had a contest to see which bug jittered the longest, farthest, etc.  Since these Jitterbugs didn't have the clips to simply clip on  and off the motor, students had to tape the leads onto the batteries.  This was not ideal, but the competition went well and the kids enjoyed it!  Here is the link I used to help with this project: Jitterbugs

Scale Drawing

I am currently teaching one of my favorite chapters in pre-algebra.  It is all about proportions and part of that is scale drawings.  Each year I teach this, I truly feel like I teach it better and more clearly.  It really is amazing to step back and watch yourself grow as a teacher.  Anyways, this year I wanted to have students make their own scale drawing.  At first I considered having students create a scale drawing of a buildings in this Chicago skyline which would then be displayed outside my classroom.  However, after more thought I concluded it would be hard to make the buildings look as realistic as I would have wanted.   So instead, I thought I would incorporate a piece of art.  I went with this idea because I do have an interest in art and because I try to expose my students to it as much as possible since we no longer have an art teacher.  Anyways, I chose Composition A by Piet Mondrian.  As a class, we assessed the amount of space we had for our artwork and determined a starting ratio for our proportion.  From there,  I had students work in groups to draw a set of rectangles according to our first ratio.  I would definitely do this project again!  Here is the final product :)

Common Core Math Standards:

Analyze proportional relationships and use them to solve real-world and mathematical problems.

2.  Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities.

Objectives:

Students will:

-identify Piet Mondrian's artwork 

-determine the new size of part of the artwork using proportions

Assessment:

Students were assessed based on the accuracy of their calculations.

Christmas Festivities!!

Christmas is such a hectic time, but luckily I was able to have some fun with it and be thankful for all the opportunities I've been given!  Here are some pictures of our holiday celebrations!

 Finger-paint Light Strands....so much fun and super easy!!

Gift Bags for my students in math club!

Pop-up cards and angel ornaments for our 2nd grade buddies.  Ideas taken from Pinterest :)

Angel Ornaments Link

Gift Bags for my homeroom filled with candy, pencils, and glow sticks for the new year!

Letters to Santa

With teaching middle school, the magic of Santa is somewhat lost.  However, this year I came across a post (unfortunately, I do not remember where) that shared a lesson plan about writing letters to Santa from the perspective of a villain.  I thought it would be a perfect creative/persuasive writing assignment and I could also use it to teach students how to write a business letter.  So first of all, I had student select a villain of their choice.  Next, they had to brainstorm ideas why their villain would be worthy of a Christmas present this year.  From there, I told students they would be writing a letter to Santa asking for a Christmas present through the point of view of their villain.  The kids loved this and had so much fun thinking of reasons why their character was worthy.  I loved that my students had the chance to be creative and at the same time were learning how to write a business letter with a clear purpose.  The results were great and very amusing the read.  Here are some examples:

Common Core Writing Standards:

1.  Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.
      a.  Introduce claim(s), acknowledge alternate or opposing claims, and organize the reasons and evidence logically.

4.  Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience.  (Grade-specific expectations for writing types are defined in standards 1-3 above.)

Objectives:

Students will:

-write a business letter 

-create arguments that support the worthiness of their villain

-organize ideas to fit the format of a business letter

Assessment:

Students were assessed based on the final draft of their business letter.  They were evaluated on the format of the business letter, ability to maintain a formal tone, and the quality of their persuasive reasons provided in the letter.

Sign Language Art Project

   In high school, we spent a lot of time drawing hands in my art class and as my homeroom's "art teacher," I thought we could incorporate that into one of our art projects.  I found this lesson to help me out: Sign Language Art.  I first introduced the sign language alphabet to my class.  My students were much more interested than I expected them to be.  They immediately began spelling their names or sending messages to their friends across the room.  From there, I told them to think of a word (not too long) that describes our school.  Once everyone chose a word (no repeats) they practiced drawing the letters of their word.  After some practice, students chose a color of construction paper to draw their final signs.  Once I approved their final signs, they traced them with a Sharpie and cut them out.  The next art class, they used water color to paint a white sheet of paper the same color as their construction paper.  The first layer of paint was very light, but for the next layer, they darkened up the paint to make designs on their paper.  Finally, after everything dried, students glued their hands to their water colored paper and used stencils to label each letter.  The students loved this art project and many of them asked to laminate it so they could take it home!

Skin Brochure

  To wrap up our unit about the skin, students created a skin brochure that could be used in a dermatologist's office.  The brochure would provide information about the layers of the skin, functions, of skin, and of course, the risk of skin cancer.
  Thanks to the computer teacher, students were able to use Publisher to make their brochures fancy and professional!

Illinois State Standards:

12.A.3a  Explain how cells function as “building blocks” of organisms and describe the require­ments for cells to live.

Objectives:

Students will:

-create a visually appealing brochure 

-identify the layers of skin

-list the functions of the skin

-explain the risk of skin cancer

Assessment:

Students were assessed based on the completeness and accuracy of their brochure using the following rubric:

Apples to Apples

  Of course I want to help expand my students' vocabularies, but I struggle to find a successful method.  Our middle school students have a vocab book which basically introduces 20 new words each week.  In my opinion, this is a lot of words.  These 20 words do not include the vocabulary words from the short stories or novels in reading.  With all of these words, I find that students simply memorize the definition and forget most of them the next week.  I try to encourage my students to use the vocabulary words in their writing for extra credit, but students tend to use the "easy" words or words that are already familiar to them.  I also try to play vocabulary Bingo to make vocabulary more fun.  I recently tried having my students create and play Apples to Apples using vocabulary words.
  First I had students play the real Apples to Apples game so that they could become familiar with the rules.  Next, I copied red and green blank Apples to Apples cards.  On the green cards, students put a vocabulary word from The Outsiders along with three synonyms.  On the red cards, students had fun putting random (and appropriate) words, people, events, or places with a simple explanation or quote.  After the cards were completed, students were able to play Apples to Apples and practice their vocab words.  This worked very well and kept students' attention.  They even played this with a substitute while I was at a workshop!

Common Core Standards:

Language Standards

4c. Consult general and specialized reference materials (e.g., dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses), both print and digital, to find the pronunciation of a word or determine or clarify its precise meaning or its part of speech.

5b. Use the relationship between particular words (e.g., synonym/antonym, analogy) to better understand each of the words.

Objectives:

Students will:

-identify synonyms for vocabulary words

-make connections to vocabulary words to encourage retention

Assessment:

Students were assessed based on the completion of their Apples to Apples cards.  They were formally assessed based on the final vocabulary test for The Outsiders.

Viscosity Races

During our study of volcanoes, viscosity became an important word in each sixth grader's vocabulary.  In order for students to have a good grasp on how viscosity is a property used to describe liquids, we hosted Viscosity Races!  After introducing the word and discussing some examples, I gave students a list of materials that would be available to them during this lab.  Students worked with a buddy to brainstorm a procedure the class could use to compare the viscosity of various liquids.  After working in pairs, we discussed our ideas as a class and agreed on a procedure.  The next day, students worked in groups of four and were given four liquids.  They worked together to build a ramp and have the four liquids "compete" in a viscosity race.  Below are some pictures and the guided lab I used.

Illinois State Standards:

11.A.3a  Formulate hypotheses that can be tested by collecting data.

11.A.3b  Conduct scientific experiments that control all but one variable.

11.A.3d  Explain the existence of unexpected results in a data set.

11.B.3b  Sketch, propose and compare design solutions to the problem considering available materials, tools, cost effectiveness and safety.

11.B.3e  Evaluate the test results based on established criteria, note sources of error and recommend improvements.

12.C.3b  Model and describe the chemical and physical characteristics of matter (e.g., atoms, molecules, elements, compounds, mixtures).

Objectives:

Students will:

-design a controlled experiment

-create a data table to record results of experiment

-identify possible sources of error 

-compare the viscosities of various liquids

Assessment:

Students were assessed based on their data collection, analysis, and conclusion in their lab report.  Students were required to identify two possible sources of error, identify two ways to improve their experiment, explain how the different viscosities affected the results, and confirm or disprove their hypothesis.

How? Why?

  Last Friday I heard about the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary School right before I went to the teacher's lounge for lunch.  As I joined the discussion in the teacher's lounge, I was truly in shock.  Unfortunately, it is not unfamiliar to hear of shootings in public places.  Just recently we have heard about shootings at a mall and a movie theater, but how could something like this happen in an elementary school?!?  I didn't understand how anyone could intentionally harm an innocent child, no taller than three feet.
  When lunch ended, I was still in shock, but I don't think it had quite settled in yet.  I did not say anything to my students, first of all, because I did not have all the facts and second of all, I honestly did not know how to tell them something like this.  At the end of the day, our principal asked us all to pray for those in Connecticut.  My students immediately turned to me with a confused look.  I told them to pray and I would explain it to them.  After the prayer, heads immediately turned my way, waiting for an explanation.  It was in that moment that all of this actually hit me.  I barely held it together as I told my 7th grade class that someone had entered an elementary school and killed approximately 26 people, a majority of them being around the age of 6.  My voice was shaking as I tried to answer any questions.  The hardest thing was seeing panic set in for one of my students who has cousins in Connecticut.
  I truly do not think I will ever forget the moment I told my class about this horrific incident.  It was hard to tell children that other children were murdered for no reason.  I felt as if I took away a piece of their innocence that day.
  As Monday rolled around, I was still having trouble grasping how something so terrible could happen.  I continuously pondered how I was going to approach this topic with my students.  I decided to initiate an open discussion.  I asked students to first share what they have heard about the incident and then to share any thoughts, opinions, or questions they may have.  It turned out to be a beneficial discussion and many of my students knew a lot about what had happened.  We had limited time to discuss the topic, but I did not want it to end there.  I decided to give my students the opportunity to reflect on what had happened through writing.  To get them started, I suggested they may write letters.  These letters could be written to the victims, the victims' families, the shooter, the shooter's family, or the teachers.  The students had powerful and thoughtful words to share.  Many expressed anger and confusion, while others wished the shooter to be forgiven by God because "everyone deserves to be forgiven."  The words of each student showed both their maturity and their innocence.  It also showed me how extremely lucky I am to be a teacher working with extraordinary children.
  My thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected in the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.

Optical Illusion Art

So I came across this art project on Pinterest.  It turned out to be super easy and looks really cool.  I actually got tons of compliments from other teachers.

Here is the link to the original post: Step by Step Directions

It does a great job of explaining each step :)

I will say if I were to do this again, I would have students make less vertical wavy lines or use a smaller sheet of paper.  I ended up having my students trim each end of their paper because it is a very time consuming project.

Halloween Art Project

For Halloween, we did a printmaking project.  I had a little bit of background with this because we learned how to do this in my college art education class.  Luckily, we had all of the supplies tucked away in our art closet.  We used foam trays, printmaking paint (it was probably very old, but it did the job), brayers, and construction paper.  I instructed the students to carve a simple Halloween design on the back of their foam tray.  Next, they used the brayer to cover it with paint.  From there, students used their foam trays as stamps to print the image on multiple sheets of construction paper.  By making multiple prints, we were able to decorate our classroom and give some prints to PTO to decorate for the Halloween party.  This was a simple project and students gained experience with something other than colored pencils and paint.  The one thing I will keep in mind is to use foam trays/plates without any imprinted symbols or words.  The trays we used had imprints on the side we didn't carve, but it still affected some of the prints.  This resulted in some of the students having to re-carve their image on another foam plate.

The Outsiders Newspaper Article

Currently, our class is reading The Outsiders (one of my all time FAVORITE novels)!  One of the writing assignments the students work on is a newspaper article.  Students write an article describing the events of chapter 4 (when Johnny kills Bob).  Before students begin writing, we read published newspaper articles and discussed the components of a good article.  We also defined bias and students focused on being unbiased in the writing assignment.  After the pre-writing activities, students began their rough draft.  From there, I worked with the computer teacher to help students create a final draft using Microsoft Publisher.

Illinois State Standards:

Objectives:

Assessment: