How can I make an abstract concept – one where I may not be able to look at close up – engaging and applicable? For example, the kinetic molecular theory (KMT) is one of the most important concepts for high school students to learn. Demos like adding food colouring to hot and cold water or…
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The running joke regarding my classroom is that it’s a fire hazard. Sure, at the start of the year, the countertops are all clear and clean. But, by the end of term (and especially by the end of the year), assignments, test papers, extra handouts, and student projects lay all over the countertop and each…
Density is an awesome property of matter. Density can help identify unknown materials (circa Archimedes and the Gold crown). Differences in density determine the relative position of objects (ie. Which objects sink and which objects float). Unfortunately, students too often learn that density is just a formula. A calculation. That it’s not applicable to the…
What are some science skills students need to know how to do? I can sum it up in one statement: we want students to be able to think (and do) like a scientist. Therefore, science students need to know how to design and run experiments, collect and analyze data, draw conclusions and defend them. (Refer…
As a teacher, it’s important for me to check student understanding, to know how a student is getting an answer to a question. For a student to just get an answer to a question is not enough. What if the answer is wrong? How, then, can I help the student if I don’t even know…
CER (Claim Evidence Reasoning) is an effective way for students to structure their conclusions by wrapping together their lab evidence and science reasoning. However, do you need a simple, low-barrier-to-entry example to intro CER (Claim Evidence Reasoning)? I do. Even though I have CER infographics from Blog 4 to show my students fun science CER…
Team building is an important part of running a class. And, it requires constant upkeep. If I want my car to run smoothly throughout the year, I can’t change the oil once a year and expect it to last. Similarly, I can’t just do a science team building activity at the beginning of the year…
Unit conversions is important to learn, but to teach unit conversions is boring because most examples are irrelevant to life. Sure, we can teach students to convert kilometres to millimetres (and that might be important for certain science applications). But, when is a student really ever going to need to know how far the distance…
CER (Claim Evidence Reasoning) is a great way to teach students to draw conclusions by analyzing their data and linking it to with scientific facts/reasoning, but CER practice resources are hard to find. In Blog 4, I give some CER examples in the form of infographics. The infographics are great in helping students see samples…
Is there something we can do to start teaching STEM in a simple way? STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) is an increasingly popular way to teach science and math in a holistic, applied way by using the engineering design process. Teaching stem gives off the impression that it requires teachers to go well beyond…
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