Lesson Plans, Ideas and Tips for Today’s Busy Teacher

15 Outdoor Lesson Ideas for Your Urban Science Classroom

15 Outdoor Lesson Ideas for Your Urban Science Classroom

Want to incorporate more outdoor science lessons in your urban classroom but lack the green space to do it? These 15 tips will have you and your kiddos slapping on the sunscreen and your sunglasses and heading into the great outdoors in no time!   Use what you've...

Lesson Plan: Easy Symbiotic Relationships

Lesson Plan: Easy Symbiotic Relationships

"I love the ecology unit! Thanks for all your hard work! Do you have any basic answers for the unit 3 symbiosis want ad assignment (like what type of relationship each group has)? This would help so much when it comes to grading them so I don't have to research each...

A Day in the Life of A Science Teacher

A Day in the Life of A Science Teacher

Wanna walk a day in our shoes? Here's what a day in the life of a Nerdy science teacher (aka Mel and Gerdy) looks like: 7:00 am: Arrive at school. Gather materials to be copied if needed. We loved raiding the copy machine for as long as we could each morning in order...

Life Science Scope and Sequence

Life Science Scope and Sequence

There have been SO many requests for us to detail out our year-long agenda - what order we teach lessons, how long a unit takes to teach, how much content is delivered, etc. These are all great questions, and we are so happy to be able to share with you...

Teacher Tools: Using REDDIT to Discover Top Education Trends

Teacher Tools: Using REDDIT to Discover Top Education Trends

We have been playing around with different ways of "Getting Nerdy" online.  The main avenues teachers use to search for new ideas, teaching tips, and trending educational trends tends to be through the standard sites of Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter,...

Lesson Plan: Skeletal System Project

Lesson Plan: Skeletal System Project

There ain't no bones about it - humans would be a big pile of muscles, skin and gooey organs if it weren't for the skeletal system!  We love teaching our human body unit from the inside out - skin, muscles, bones, and all the other systems that work in-between. Our...

Lesson Plan: Muscular System Blinking Lab

Lesson Plan: Muscular System Blinking Lab

When you're teaching the human body systems, it can be fun to start from the outside and work your way in. After completing the Integumentary system, we liked to move in another layer, the muscular system.  Here's how we taught this lesson in our class - the...

Lesson Plan: Integumentary System Sensory Lab

Lesson Plan: Integumentary System Sensory Lab

We love teaching our Human Body Unit from the inside out. Skin, muscles, bones, and all the other systems that work in-between. Before we begin though, we like to introduce important vocabulary using prefixes/suffixes/root words used in the medical community...

Lesson Plan: Earthworm Dissection

Lesson Plan: Earthworm Dissection

Ya...they're kinda slimy.  They can be a bit smelly too.  No matter how you slice 'em, kids love to explore the earthworm!  These invertebrates make for some of the easiest dissections and they are great way to introduce comparative anatomy when discussing the human...

5 Tips for Managing Dissection in your Class

5 Tips for Managing Dissection in your Class

Dissections are a great way to introduce comparative anatomy to middle and high school students.  They love to see relationships between their bodies and other organisms and they are always blown away when you tell them that so many animals and humans are similar in...

15 Ways to Use Task Cards in Class

15 Ways to Use Task Cards in Class

Task Cards... woohoo! They are the new go-to teaching tool for teachers and what most don't know is that they make superb secondary study tools, too! They are versatile, easy print-and-go resources, and they can serve so many uses in your classroom.  Here are fifteen...

3 Tips for Differentiating Lessons in Science

3 Tips for Differentiating Lessons in Science

Differentiation... every instructional coach, administrator and professional development seminar's favorite buzz word.  It can be overwhelming, but it does't necessarily mean that you need to call the school nurse for the defibrillator. Do these questions seem like...

10 Tips for Teaching Cells

10 Tips for Teaching Cells

Knock knock... Who's there? Egg cell... Egg cell who? Egg-Cell-ent ideas for teaching cells! If you're looking for some ideas to "cell" kids on your cells unit, these tips might be just  what "eu" need... 🙂 Graphic Organizers and Analogies: As students learn the...

10 Ways to Teach the Scientific Method

10 Ways to Teach the Scientific Method

At the start of the school year it can be a daunting task to reteach the scientific method to your students, especially considering they were just in school two months ago! To help you combat scientific method regression, we've gathered 10 easy ways to teach the...

Lesson Plan: Observation and Inference Activity

Lesson Plan: Observation and Inference Activity

Your students may have a difficult time understanding how science class relates to what scientists do in the real world. What do scientists do to learn about their surroundings?  How do scientists gather data and determine which data is reliable? A great way to kick...

Teacher Tools: Lab Safety Tips

Teacher Tools: Lab Safety Tips

Once you have introductions and classroom logistics out of the way, it's time to get down to the real meat of your lessons: LABS.  But wait!  How are you going to ensure that your budding scientists are aware of the dangers that lurk in the science laboratory?  Here...

Lesson Plan: The Characteristics of Living Things

Lesson Plan: The Characteristics of Living Things

Every year, before we start digging into the topic of cells, we want students to be able to tell the difference between living and non-living things. You wouldn’t believe how many students think water is alive – but that’s a great starting point. At the end of this...

Teacher Tools: Refresher Course in the Scientific Method

Teacher Tools: Refresher Course in the Scientific Method

It's the first thing kids learn when they enter into their very first science class - the backbone of all scientific inquiry - the scientific method. You'd think that students would know and understand how to implement those six little steps that have been required...

Lesson Plan: Scientific Method in Review

Lesson Plan: Scientific Method in Review

We know the standards have changed. They change, what seems now, almost EVERY year. The newest change we’ve seen happening is the integration of the scientific method into the other disciplines of life science, and of course this makes total sense. BUT, when your kids...

Top Science Websites for Interactive Learning

Top Science Websites for Interactive Learning

Over the 12+ years that we have been teaching, we spent a lot of time searching for engaging websites to use in our lessons. We love to incorporate games, online labs, videos, and any other site that is both educational AND fun for our students (and us too!). Not to...

Lesson Plan: IceBreakers for Getting To Know Your Students

Lesson Plan: IceBreakers for Getting To Know Your Students

  Welcome to the first week, teach! Ready to start the new semester? Wait a minute... who ARE these people? ALL new faces and ALL new names, it's a wonder we can remember our own in those first few days of awkward introductions and mispronunciations. Instead of...

Teacher Tools: First Week of School Survival Tips

Teacher Tools: First Week of School Survival Tips

The first week of school is considered by many to be a "bust." Buses arrive late, student schedules are changing daily, kids can't find their classrooms, homeroom is extended to discuss rules and regulations, dismissal is a mess... you name it! In order to start your...

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