Teaching ScienceHelp for trainee Science teachers

I am proud to be able to announce that TeachMeet Essex will be taking place on the evening of Tuesday 19th October.

It will be taking place at the Pioneer School, Basildon. The event is open to anyone interested in education in the Essex area, as well as the unitary authorities of Southend and Thurrock. Plus anyone outside the area who is interested is also more than welcome.

I’m very nervous about getting this off the ground, and having seen some excellent Teachmeets elsewhere I know there’s a lot to live up to. But with the help of everyone we could make this an excellent unconference. Everyone is welcome, you don’t have to talk if you don’t want to.

You can find out more information at the TMEssex Wiki here: http://teachmeet.pbworks.com/TeachMeetEssex

Here are a few ideas taken from some of the talks I have given this year for ideas on using your Interactive Whiteboard during lesson starters. They could also be used as plenary tasks. Some of the ideas you will have seen before in various places, but I’m bundling them up into one file.

Here are some of the activities that are in the file:

Organ Reveal : A student comes to the board and pulls out an organ. They then have one minute to talk about the organ and its role in the body without repetition or pauses…. I’ve also included the fishing rod and balloon activities from previous presentations.

Put it in the box : This activity makes use of the layer feature. One group will go into the box, the other group will not go into the box. Drag the insects into the box….

Keyword Bingo : Pupils use a selection of words to create a bingo grid on a piece of paper. Teacher can then reveal definitions at random. Cross it off the grid and see who can get three in a row and a full house.

Plenary Circle : Simple idea, but can be used at all key stages. Pull in pairs of words to make “I know that…. ” sentences. If you have a more able group, you could leave one word in for the next pupil to use in their sentence – this means you have to think more carefully about the range of words you put around the edge of the circle.

Word Builder : How many words can you make that relate to science. Give everyone time to make as many words as they can. Students can come to the board to show examples of the words they have made.

Use the links below to download a version of the file for your whiteboard:

Promethean ActivInspireVersion : Download here

Smart 10 Version : Download here

If you use the files, I’d love to hear how they went. If you do adapt them, please let me know what you did – I’d be interested in having a copy.

Here’s an interesting animation that will help to illustrate Night and Day as well as phases of the Moon on your interactive whiteboard.

http://www.ictgames.com/dayNight/index.html

I’ve also put together a quick animation that demonstrates how the moon rotates around the Earth. The Moon always keeps the same face facing towards the Earth (and so the same face pointing away). This down to two important facts.

1. The moon rotates on its on axis, it takes approximately 28 days to make one full rotation

2. The moon orbits around the earth. It takes approximately 28 days to make one full orbit.

In the animation below, I have coloured the moon to make it clearer. This is the view from above as it rotates.

View Full Screen

As the moon rotates, it is also travelling around the Earth. The Moon has become locked into a pattern – the time it takes to orbit the Earth is the same as the time it takes to make one full rotation – approximately 28 days.

View Full Screen

As you can see, as the moon travels around the Earth, it is also rotating. The Red/Yellow face is always kept facing towards the Earth. If we were standing on the Earth looking at the Moon we would only see the Red/Yellow face. We would never be able to see the Blue/Green face.

Another animation that may be useful can be found here: http://www.edumedia-sciences.com/en/a213-earth-moon-system-1

You are probably already aware of the problems with Sparklebox following the imprisonment of its creator

Here are three websites that are filling the gap left by Sparklebox – all of them provide free printable worksheets and display materials that teachers might find useful.

Twinkl : This is a brand new online resource centre created just for teachers. Resources for Literacy and Numeracy are already online, I’m hoping they’ll start to cover Science and other subjects to follow soon.

Primary School Teaching : Primary School Teaching is a platform for sharing and ranking teaching resources and ideas. Lots of subjects covered and a useful search facility.

Teachers Pet : Another new website with a growing bank of PDF resources to download. It was only launched this week – so give it time to grow. IWB resources are on their way apparently.

Want to build your own model solar system? Here’s a handy guide to work it all out to the correct scale. Simply put in the size of the Sun and the website will give you all the sizes and distances of the planets.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/solar_system/

And while we’re on the subject, here’s a great video that shows the sheer size of the solar system:

And another which shows just how small our Sun really is, when compared to other stars.

Heres a link to a great lesson starter/plenary idea from the ICT Games website. Science Bingo. It uses the Primary Science vocab words from the Kent Scheme of work, which will suit most Primary Science classes.

Download a pack of Bingo cards to photocopy for the children – then use the Word generator to select words to cross off the bingo grid.

It’s a simple, fun idea  to help with keyword recognition.

Thanks to Jason Dilling (@jasondilling) and James (@Wigglemyears) on Twitter for coming up with the resource!

Here’s a quick post to point to a guide on how to use the LogIT Lab software with the LogIT Explorer dataloggers to monitor experiments.

http://www.educationict.org.uk/pdf/logitintro.pdf

http://www.educationict.org.uk/dataloggers.htm

Worksheets and Lesson guides : http://logitworld.com

Just a quick post to flag up this fun little resource site for Science called Science Storybooks.

It contains a stack of Flash animations that can be used to introduce many different science concepts, some include songs that would provide a fun way to start a lesson.

The resources are completely free, and also contain links to lesson notes and other information. Well worth taking a look at.

Thanks to the iLearn Technology Blog for the heads-up on this resource.

Thanks to fellow twitterer Sophie Bessemer for tipping me off about these science resources from BP Educational Services, the education department of the energy company.

For Primary Science, there are some very useful resources in the Young Science Investigators series aimed at KS2 pupils. These resources include the following modules:

• Energy
• Our Environment
• Online Experiments

All these resources are free, but you do need to register with the site to get them although registration is also free.

It’s also worth taking a look at the free resources that you can order and have sent to your school such as posters and CD-ROM materials.

Take a look at these resources and see what you think. Could they be used to support science on your Interactive Whiteboard?

iBoard produce an excellent bank of interactive resources for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 classes in several subjects, including literacy, numeracy and science.

In November last year iBoard was purchased by the TES and made available free of charge to all teachers, which is an excellent development.

If you are involved in teaching KS1, this is well worth a visit.

You can access the resources here: http://www.tes.iboard.co.uk/