Teaching Fossils

I loved teaching Fossils!

Great fun with high interest for your students. They love to study fossils!

Here are three active-learning based activities all rolled into one package. Well, actually, three packages. It was too big to upload all in one package.

Activity One is a Fossil or NonFossil? Lab.
Good way to introduce fossils to your students. They get fossils mixed up with things like modern shells (just mother nature!) and pottery shards (artifacts). Can be done with a variety of materials. Really nice if you have a pottery shard. We had them in our department. Make some if you can. Break up something you painted at a pottery store and get it really dirty.

Activity Two is a real-deal Fossil Lab, simplified for middle school students. I don't think it's necessary for younger students to memorize anything about fossils. At the middle school level, your goal is to teach what a fossil is, what an index fossil is, and what type of time index fossils can indicate (relative).

Activity Three is a wonderful Mystery Bones Activity. It's been around for years. I have no idea where the original originated. I used it at least 15-20 years ago.

FUN BONUS: Fossil Word Search Puzzle.

Beyond that, make sure they have fun!

CONSIDER THIS: Add a few Fossil Activities to your Geologic History unit.

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!

Mystery Boxes

One of my favorite First Week Activities when I taught 5th and 6th graders was MYSTERY BOXES.



In fact, I think I used this when I student taught. That would have been in 1969, in Hopkins, MN, where I got my first teaching job in January of 1970.

Click here for a copy of the LabSheet.



It takes a bit of time to set up but is really worth it.
    1.    Find at least seven similar-sized boxes, such as shoe boxes. It would be nice if they were exactly the same size. The best ones I ever made were 6 inch cubes.
    2.    Into each box, add the same items. This is VERY important! Always put the same things into each box! About six or seven items is good. Items such as these: marble, small rubber ball, jingle bell, plastic spoon, etc. Nothing that can rot or break.   
    3.    Cover with brown paper, grocery bags work great. Add lots of tape. Obviously, this is to discourage peeking!   
    4.    Label on the outside with fat, black marker with something generic like A, B, C, etc.
    5.    Run off labsheets.
    6.    Hand out a labsheet to each student and a MYSTERY BOX to each small group.
    7.    Tell them the object of the day is to figure out what's in the MYSTERY BOXES. Tell them exactly how many are inside each box. They are to try to figure it out Without Peeking! Use the senses. (Have magnets ready if they ask.)   
    8.    Give them one class period to record and test and listen and fill out their papers.
    9.    The next day or if you have a 90 minute Block, the last 1/2 hour: Have each team send one person up to the chalkboard to write down what they think is in the boxes.

IMPORTANT: When they are all done recording, circle all the CORRECT ANSWERS ONLY. If you are really lucky, some but not all the items will be listed by any team. I was always very happy if at least one item remained a mystery.

NEVER TELL THEM WHAT THEY DIDN'T FIGURE OUT! This is important.

Basically, science is about trying to understand what isn't known at the moment. And nobody tells a scientist if they are correct! This drives kids crazy but is the NATURE OF SCIENCE. Scientists are always trying to solve puzzles. What is inside a single atom? What is causing that sickness? What is Mars like on the surface? How deep is the Ocean? Will that Tornado come close to our town? Scientists have to figure things out with their senses and intuition and run experiments and keep trying to figure out what the "Answers" are. But nobody tells us if we are right.

CONSIDER THIS: Add Mystery Boxes to the beginning of your teaching year.

FUN LINK: Another version of Mystery Boxes that uses one steel ball and ramps or partitions inside each box they have to try to figure out or map. A third version.

Earthquake Movie

Just found a fabulous Flash Movie on the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, called "Shock Waves."

Click here for a link.

This can be viewed Full Screen and would be wonderful to show on your SmartBoard. Right before I got a SmartBoard in my classroom, I had a computer hooked up to the Internet and a projection machine with a very large screen and I used that in a similar manner.

Would work great either way!

The movie is 46 minutes long. You could show parts each day. Or all at once.

From the USGS Site:

"This 46-minute film includes dramatic historical footage, colorful animations, and interviews with earthquake experts. The catastrophe of the great 1906 quake spurred a century of progress in earthquake science and engineering. Current and future research includes drilling through the San Andreas Fault at depth in the SAFOD Experiment. Learn what you can do to reduce the risk to yourself and family.

Shock Waves received recognition as an outstanding documentary at the 2006 Telly Awards and has been nominated for an Emmy."

CONSIDER THIS: Add this USGS Earthquake Film, "Shock Wave" to your Earthquake Unit.

FUN LINK: Click here for the main USGS video/animation page. Many wonderful things to project on your Smartboard or Big Screen.

Teaching Cloud Cover

"I'm walking in a cloud!"

I once had a teacher write me about a student of hers who realized fog was a cloud of sorts and during a class walk around the schoolyard, made that lovely comment.

She also loved the Cloud Cover Simulation Activity that is on my Weather page. Her kids had a great time tearing up pieces of paper to represent the various percentages of cloud cover.

Basically, you give each group of students a blue piece of paper. Then they get all or part of a white piece of paper. It's a good idea to have very small groups so you can double up on the cloud cover assignments.

For example: The group doing Overcast (100%) gets the total piece of white paper; the group doing Partly Cloudy gets half (50%) of the white paper. And so on...

They are instructed to rip the paper up into small pieces, all greater than a postage stamp, of course, and then glue the pieces onto the blue paper.

The blue papers with the white clouds are put up for display. The class then gets to guess which paper represents which type of cloud cover. After they are all recorded, the teacher puts them in the correct order. (Code the backs of the blue papers, maybe?)

The kids then sketch the appropriate types of cloud cover on their paper and add the Cloud Cover Symbols.

The next time you have your kids look out the window to assess the cloud type and cloud cover for the Weather Observations Activity, they should have a much better idea as to what 50% cloud cover really looks like!

CONSIDER THIS: Add a Cloud Cover Simulation Activity to your Weather unit!

FUN LINK: From the University of Illinois.

Cloud Flashcards to make.