Amazing crystals ready to go.

Over the last few weeks I have been spending my time working on a crystals unit for students in Year 5 in Australia and Year 6 in the USA. The difference in grade being of course to the relative curriculums.
This program was one I ran with year 5 and 6 students a couple of years ago and definately one my students enjoyed. At that time however I tried to have some success with Epsom and salt crystal growth, but we just couldn't get the crystals to grow and in fact we couldn't even grow salt crystal seeds despite trying various methods - no joy.
The greatest success we have had are with Alum and Copper Sulfate which are truly beautiful crystals and very easy for students to grow.

As you can image the students all wanted to have the opportunity to grow Copper Sulfate crystals. Copper sulfate is available in the gardening section of hardware stores. In Australia, it is available in Bunnings relatively inexpensively. 

The Amazing Crystals introduces students to crystals, where and how they grow and provides some really nice pictures of examples. It is always nice however to have the real thing to hold and you will often find students have collected some crystals at home that they may be willing to bring in. In Australia we have a Scientists in Schools program which provides the opportunity for different specialists to come and share their expertise in your classroom. I invited a geologist to come and provide a detail of knowledge well beyond my capabilities. The students really enjoyed his coompany and the amazing resources he was able to access.

In the unit, I outline how crystals form on a molecular level and provide opportunities for students to comprehend the information using drama. There is a procedural outline for growing crystal seeds (the base of growing a good healthy sized crystal) and then for applying this knowledge to grow a variety of crystals.

Students are then given the opportunity to create their own investigation into growing crystals. To reinforce knowledge I have made some posters to use and to aid in assessment there is a suggested assessment for each of the 9 activities described in the unit.
I feel that this is a comprehensive unit and I really hope others enjoy teaching this unit as much as I did.
The crystals make a great science fair project also.
The unit available in a few of my stores including Teachers Pay Teachers and Teacher's Notebook. More stores to come and the Australian version is also close to completion.

http://www.teachersnotebook.com/product/Jennidb/amazing-crystals-a-year-6-investigation 

Finding a new way

It has been a few weeks since I have written a post and it is part due to a distraction I have had with researching information on students with special needs. Having had some recent experiences with teaching students with a variety of ailments I spent some time looking at the rates and what may be causing the increased rates of sickness among our students. My more recent teaching experiences with students with special needs are however with those born into homes that have caused them to develop a disorder. Quite sad.
I am also interested in many of the professional development opportunities I have been discovering through reading a variety of American teaching websites and teaching support sites. Sites such as the Teaching Channel: https://www.teachingchannel.org/?national=1 which has short videos, blogs and a Q&A forum for seeking assistance on a particular issue.

The videos are made in classrooms, feature classroom teachers and their students and provide real examples of the implementation of the concepts being demonstrated. I have found the videos thought provoking and with concepts that are truly adaptable to a variety of classroom scenarios and ages.

Another site I have enjoyed learning from of late is http://www.teachthought.com/ The short articles present useful, practical and realistic information on a variety of topics. I am enjoying discovering ways of implementing best practice teaching methods and alternative ways of setting up classrooms and the dynamics this creates.

It is well worth your readers while to have a look at these and I would really appreciate others sharing their favourite cutting edge teaching methodology websites with me.

Rube Goldberg and simple and compound machines

It's been quite an effort and a learning curve to say the least, but I have finally finished the Simple and Compound Machines Unit that I have been working on. 

I recall teaching this unit with my Stage 2 students a few years ago and actually incorporated it with the work of Rube Goldberg. We (my students and I) thought his work was really fun and interesting and it certainly sparked a light of imagination in the eyes of my students. 

Many of us would have seen adverts on television that used Rube Goldberg machines, which in a nutshell are machines that intentionally take a large number of steps to complete a simple task, such as turning off a lightbulb in 20 steps. Simple machines are connected to one another to complete the task. It's fun to watch, but as my students discovered, it is painstaking to create a rube goldberg machine and have it work repeatedly.



As you can see from these Rube Goldberg machines made by university students.There is no reason though why younger children can't make them and in fact the youngest students I had doing it were in year 3. When looking at these machines in actions though it is clear they are made up of a range of simple machines working together.These videos are a great precursor or final display at the end of the simple and compound machines unit I have just finished.The unit is suitable for students in years 3-5, but in the Australian version, it is aligned with the year 4 science curriculum elaborations.This is one of the biggest unit's I have written and I am so proud of how comprehensive it is. 

It includes:

• A teacher’s guide with thorough explanations of concepts included,
• Assessment for each of the activities included,
• Comprehensive extension work for three of the activities to extend students laterally, 
• Full activity descriptions,
• 6 x Bright and fun simple machines posters
• Assessment worksheets
• Extension worksheets
• Investigating scientifically and design and make student reference guide
• Testing simple machines worksheets for practical activities,
• Extensions worksheets
• Simple machine activity stations cards to laminate
• Design and make planning pages
• Simple and compound machines PowerPoint presentation.

If all elements of this unit are taught it could take a year 4 class approximately 8 weeks. Otherwise it can be broken down and used as smaller resources.

Students will love undertaking the acitivities and I can't wait to teach it to my students in the future.

It's available now in USA and Australian versions in my TpT store and on Teacher's Marketplace.

Please let me know what you think of it.

What are simple and compound machines?

If you follow me on facebook you would have seen my link to an awesome website I love to use with my students called EdHeads. The site is http://www.edheads.org. I have used their simple machines interactive activities with students in years 3 and 4 a few times. Apart from the general layout, graphics and age appropriateness of the activities I really like that the students can't move on until they have completed the questions and demonstrated a level of comprehension.

So why the reference to Edheads?

I have been working hard on a unit on simple and compound machines for students in year 3 and 4. 
So what are simple and compound machines?
There are six common simple machines: lever, pulley, inclined plane, wheel and axle, screw and wedge. Essentially they all make life easier in one way or another. It could be that they make it easier to move a load, requiring less effort or force or that they connect or seperate two things.

A broom is a lever. The fulcrum or pivot point is the user's wrist. It moves a load (the dirt) with the load arm and is pushed with the force arm (where we hold it).

Compound machines are objects that have two or more simple machines included in them. A pair of scissors is a great compound machine. 

It has a lever (the handle) and a wedge (the blades of the scissors). A more complex compound machine is a stapler and staples.

A stapler has a lever - the handle, a wedge - the staples a wheel and axle - the pivot point for the lever and an inclined plane - the slant for papers to slide up under the staple dispenser. 

The unit I am creating has activities for students to develop a deeper understanding of simple and compound machines.
I really find that students love the rotational activity work that I have included and as you know I love my students to have hands on practical activities, while following scientific process and being encouraged to think for themselves.

This will be a very comprehensive unit with powerpoints, worksheets and the like so it can't be rushed. In the meantime have a look at Edheads. There are some other activities listed there also for older students such as the virtual knee replacement - looks like fun!

Worksheets to complete the unit on plants for year 1 and 2 students.

It has been really nice to see people have been downloading the Learn to teach science well guide that I wrote. I would love some feedback on how people have found it. I have just finished uploading the worksheets that accompany the unit described in the guide. They are available at TpT.

  

When I was teaching this unit with a year 1 class I really enjoyed the detail my young students went to in not only examining the plants before they drew their observations, but the detail in their images. I had to teach my students to draw what they saw not what they thought was there and in doing so they really noticed more from week to week. They seemed to care about the plants more as they monitored their growth and looked at every detail of the plant pots that were being passed around the class. 
I was impressed with how well they understood the concept of fair testing and I knew that I could trust them to be gentle with the plants as they were passed around the room so as to not create any accidental variables. 
It was one of those great units you just know your students will remember for a long time and that's what we aim for. 

Now that I am creating a few resources I am noticing challenges with access to free images, borders and fonts that I am legally allowed to use on my resources. I am not at the stage of being able to purchase access to stock images, but I realise this may be an option for me in the future. Any other suggestions are welcome.

So where to next. I feel that it would be only right to spend some time working on lessons for the design and make process the way I like to do it.

But hey, what about that other side of science; Design and Make.

While reading over my posts and other things I have put together today, I realised I have barely touched on another side of teaching science and technology that is the Design and Make process.

This can be a very intimidating process for teachers to undertake with their students, not only because they feel that the sourcing and organisation of resources can be a major pain, but also that design and make tasks can be messy.

Well we can't do much about the mess except reinforce with our students that if they don't clean up after themselves they won't be able to do the work. Ensuring we leave enough time in a lesson to clean up and develop a clean up routine such as allocating two students to only focus on cleaning up one particular thing. They touch nothing else and if you allocate enough of those pairs of students, pretty soon your class will be cleaner than before you began.

Now for resources; When I began teaching science in my classroom I soon realised that I was going to need a lot of resources. As I was often teaching the same lessons to a whole stage I needed 120 of something at a time. So I had to collect, use things that were free and change my thinking. What was rubbish to me and my parent community could be a perfect design and make resource for my students.

So what did I collect:

«  take away food containers - great for storing students bits and pieces while a work is in progress. Great for mixed paint too.

«  bread bag tags 

«  plastic and metal bottle lids - milk bottle, glue lids, beer bottle tops,

«  snap lock bags

«  elastic bands

«  corks

«  paper clips

«  bread bags

«  paper towel rolls and toilet rolls (if your school allows)

«  dry pasta

«  used cds

«  used wrapping paper and scraps of material

«  ribbons

«  cardboard tubes that are on dry cleaners hangers

«  tissue and match boxes

«  paddle pop sticks and balloons

«  fruit netting bags

Your parent community may also work in places where there are offcuts or items that are regularly thrown away, but could be used by your students. Ask as you will never know what you will receive.
My general rule of thumb when collecting resources was; just because I can't imagine what the kids will do with it, doesn't mean it isn't useful.
Don't limit your students to your imagination and have fun with them. Often my lesson would consist of me sitting with a stanley knife cutting pipes, bending wires or cutting foam into the shapes my students wanted so they could turn them into fantastic new objects.
Lastly a word for the neat freak teachers out there; let go and enjoy your students using their creativity in a new way.

Jenni

Powerpoint presentation to match the Learning to teach science well guide.

I have just uploaded the powerpoint presentation 'Parts of a plant and their function' to match the unit outlined in the Learn to teach science well guide. 

This is an 8 slide presentation that goes through the parts of a plant and explains how each part works. I also talk about why bees and birds like plants too. 

It's suitable for year 1 and 2.

It's available from http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Sciencetoteach for just $1.

Next I'll be working on the worksheets to accompany the unit.

I would like to create some presentations from Prezi soon as I think it is a fantastic alternative to powerpoint and best of all any teacher with an @education email address can register for free and so can your kids. There is no best way to describe a Prezi presentation. It's just something you need to see. Watch this space.

Jenni

Science lessons should elicit wonderment and creativity in the minds of our students.