ScienceFriday.com

SCIENCE FRIDAY!

Another great resource for teachers.

Click here for Science Friday - Making Science User-Friendly.

Lots of MP3s you can download and listen to with your students. There are suggestions how how to use this resource.

Also lots of Videos which would be fun to watch, too!

Using Discovery Education's PuzzleMaker

Here's a Hidden Message Puzzle you can put out on your Pick-Up Table Monday morning!
Click here.

(BTW, the hidden words in this puzzle are reuse, reduce, and recycle.)

Want to make more of your own?
Want to use the vocabulary you are teaching at the moment?

GO TO: Discovery Education and use their wonderful online Puzzlemaker.
Click here.

Wonderful website. Many different puzzles to make.

What fun!

CONSIDER THIS: Make a puzzle for your students! It could be a bonus page, a quiz, a pairs game or activity, a team game, or a test review.

The Sky's the Limit!

FRIDAY FUN!

One-Minute Mysteries

My good teacher buddy, Janet, loved to do this with her students when she had a spare minute.

Here's how this works:

Read a scenario. You know the answer. Your students get to ask yes or no questions to try to figure out the solution.

Good idea to recommend they start with general questions and narrow down to more specific questions.

Might be fun to make this a Team Game! Each team gets to ask a question and then take a stab at the answer. If they are wrong, then the next team gets a question.

You can purchase books of One-Minute Mysteries here.

Here is a website with over 100 Mysteries and the solutions.

EXAMPLE from the above website:

Mystery: Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice all live in the same house. Bob and Carol go out to a movie, and when they return, Alice is lying dead on the floor in a puddle of water and glass. It is obvious that Ted killed her but Ted is not prosecuted or severely punished.

Solution: Alice is a goldfish; Ted is a cat.

CONSIDER THIS: Add some Friday Fun to your classroom with One-Minute (or Two or Five!) Mysteries!

The Fabulous Flexagon

I love introducing students to FLEXAGONS!

Flexagons are Fabulous!

Flexagons are flexible hexagons.

Flexagons can be successfully made and flexed by almost any middle schooler if they want to give it a try. I've seen an entire class of 5th graders get caught up in Flexagon Fury!

A Flexagon in a seemingly flat piece of cut and folded paper that has hidden surfaces. When you pinch and flex, you can get the hidden sides to show up.

The easiest one is called the Trihexaflexagon. It has three surfaces, made of triangles (Tri) that fold to form a hexagon shape.

Click here for the simplest blank TriHexaFlexagon I could find. You can play with this yourself and by making one and color coding or number coding each face, you can backtrack to where you have numbers 1, 2, 3 on the sides that make each individual hexagon and then your students can color them.

Or click here to see a colored one and add the numbers in this order.

Click here to see an animation of the flexing of one of these Fabulous Flexagons!

This is one thing I would recommend: making and learning yourself first. Once you are comfortable making Flexagons, you can convey that confidence to your students.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The other really simple Flexagon in the Tetraflexagon. This series is made of squares, not triangles. There is a Tritetraflexagon (three surfaces) and a Tetratetraflexagon (four surfaces).

Click here to see the Tritetraflexagon and click here for a pattern. I had trouble finding a good blank pattern. Here's a image. Use the image to make your own pattern (or buy a book of them!). Put the "back side" letters on the front in parentheses. The students put those numbers on the back after cutting out the pattern.

Click here to see the Tetratetraflexagon and click here for a pattern. I had trouble finding a good blank pattern on the Internet. Make your own pattern. When I've made them, I put the "other side numbers" on the front in parentheses. The kids knew to put them on the back after they cut it out.

Flexagons are one of those secrets that good teachers understand. It is when we give kids difficult things to accomplish and show them the tools for success, that kids gain the self-confidence they need to face the world.

In other words, give a kid a really hard thing to do! Show him/her how to do it. Then watch them smile!

CONSIDER THIS: Add Flexagons to your BONUS BAG!

FUN LINKS: Basic Flexagon Theory. YouTube Videos.

Earth Science Wordle

Gotta GREAT SITE for you: Wordle

"Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends."

Type in words: the more of the same word, the bigger the word in the Wordle.

Here's one for fun.

Earth Science Wordle.

Directions:

Circle Meteorology in red. Circle all words related to Meteorology in red also. Repeat for the other three Branches of Earth Science.

CONSIDER THIS: Make fun BONUS Puzzles using Wordle!

MiddleSchoolScience.com

I just got an email from my friend, Liz, over at MiddleSchoolScience.com. She's taken a few years off from teaching to raise her kids. She kept her website up and going while she was away. Now I'm happy to report she's back! And her site has been upgraded!

Glad to see you back, Liz! Your new and improved website is fun to visit! It gave me inspiration during my own teaching years and I know will continue to give encouragement to anyone who visits your site.

Liz emailed me about my posts about puzzles and BONUS work for kids. She has signed up for the Highlights Magazine Picture Find service and wanted to share the link with me.

Do you remember Highlights? I do! It's been around for 60 years so most of us have seen this wonderful magazine. Check out the Highlights website. Obviously, they have kept up with the times. Great website! Even has a Science Corner.

Back to the hidden picture link. Click here for the parents' email link. Click on and off what you would like to receive.

To quote Liz:

"You get a pdf and it's two pages, so great to make copies front and back, picture takes up most of the front page."

"I have challenge puzzles, and my 5th graders LOVE the Highlights Magazine picture finds. I get one emailed to me each month and I have been saving them, and I put out new ones as the old ones are snatched up! I think it's GREAT for making observations and using both sides of their brains. Both boys and girls love them. They can work on them when they are done with their labs/activities."

Be sure to visit Liz' site. I have had a link on my website for years. She's the teacher website on the Internet that originally inspired me to start my own. Be sure to visit her planbook and lab journal pages.

Thank you, Liz! And welcome back! You are one of those special teachers who I wish had been just down the hall from me!

Building Polyhedrons

I loved to put out polyhedrons for BONUS points.

I tried to keep kids busy at all times, right up to the bell. If kids were done with their homework, I would let them get out homework from another class. Or I would encourage them to get a BONUS PAGE from my class to do.

I've already talked about putting out Coloring Sheets for BONUS points.

Now here's another idea! Run some patterns off on colored paper! Put out one or two sheets per week and watch them get snatched up! Especially if you make a couple yourself and hang them from the ceiling over the Pick-Up Table.

Pick-Up Table: I always had a table set up by my door with all the work for the day ready to be picked up by the students as they walked in the room. This saved lots of class time for me. More on the Pick-Up Table another day!

I always had a couple of new BONUS pages on the top of the table EVERY DAY! They are easy to do. Make a new crisscross puzzle on Discovery.com's Puzzlemaker site. Find fun pages in some of the old workbooks sitting on your shelf. Surf the net for fun ideas.

CONSIDER THIS: In Science class, anything that exercises the mind of your students is good for BONUS!

KEWL IDEA: Before you run off, add some words for direction. Check out this example!

FUN LINKS: Several Patterns from Duke University.
Lotsa Paper Models of Polyhedrons!

Coloring Sheets

I loved to put out Coloring Sheets for my students to color for extra credit.

I've always suspected some of my students thought I was off base when I would put out coloring sheets as bonus work. These were high school students. High school students don't color!

But they did! They loved to color. And I was very careful with the types of coloring sheets I would put out. The sheets had to have a pattern to them. By coloring to show a pattern, I figure they were exercising both sides of the brain.

They were only worth 1 point each. You'd be surprised how many students would grab the new ones when they showed up on my Pick-Up Table. Even worth that little.

CONSIDER THIS: Try coloring sheets in your classroom!

FUN LINKS: Celtic Knot; Flower Wheel; Stars Wreath

CHECK IT OUT: Minneapolis Institute of Arts - Color the classics!