Scavenger Hunt Fun!

It's that time of year! The weather is warming up, the sun us shining, the birds are chirping, the trees and flowers are blooming......and the kids would much rather be outside than inside! Who can blame them? I would much rather be outside than inside, too! I wanted to share an easy but FUN activity with you all. I know it's past Easter, and we don't celebrate Easter at my school, so you could totally use this idea anytime this spring. The eggs are just a vessel to hide clues in.

Our spring break is next week. Which means that this week our kiddos are on high alert for anything that will distract them from our lessons. We decided to take our kids outside and let them run wild, as long as they were getting their work done. When we return from spring break, our state testing begins. So we decided to use a scavenger hunt to review with our students. It gets them outside. They can run. They can talk. They can jump and spin. They can enjoy the outside. And it gives them a break from the classroom.

We wanted to review government terms and apply them to Canada, so the questions all relate to our 6th grade Georgia standards of government and Canada. I have included the PDF if you teach this content, and I also included a generic answer document in case you don't teach this content, but you wanted to use this idea. You would have to make your own question cards, but it's pretty easy using a Word document. You can also do this with ANY subject. All you need are questions cut apart. Easy and no time at all to prepare for, aside from stuffing the eggs (but parents could totally do that!).

So all I did was type out 25 questions that would be government review and Canadian government. Then I cut apart the questions, and stuffed them into eggs. We made 100 eggs, 4 for each questions. Then we hid them in our outdoor classroom area. Some eggs were in plain view. Others were hid a little better. There were 3 of us outside at the same time, so about 80 kiddos, and there were plenty of eggs.

We had some rules, such as: you must put the question back in the egg, close it, and place it where you found it; and you have to FIND the eggs- no taking an egg from someone's hand!

Our kids loved this activity! I had several come up to me and tell me thank you for letting them do this. It's so simple, yet they kids really appreciated it. I know we used eggs, but you could still do this in April or May. You could use anything to hide the questions in. Eggs are just easy.

Click on the images below to download either the Canadian Government activity or the Generic Answer Key that can be used with any questions.

I hope your students enjoy this activity as much as mine did!

 

Fitting It All In: 6 Tips for Science Experimentation on a Shortened Schedule

So you've figured out set-up, take-down and storage of your lab materials using some handy tips from our previous blog post. You've just gone over the directions and your kiddos are ready to get elbow deep into a frog exploration when the bell rings. Wait... WHAT?!?!? What happened to your class time?  Where did it go? You just looked at the clock and you had at least a good half hour left. How can anyone get through an elaborate lab such as a dissection or an inquiry lab from start to finish in a 50 minute (or less) block of time? In this day and age of "go, go, GO!", teachers have to be flexible. Over scheduled students are changing classes, heading to constant testing which alters schedules for weeks on end, participating in plays, sports activities, and the like which pulls kids from your room on a whim. So, how do you ensure that every student experiences experiments and labs in this kind of chaos? We've got some teacher-tested tips for you for when time is of the essence!

1. Smooth Review: To ensure a well organized lab day, go over lab expectations, rules, consequences, procedures, materials, etc. the day before the lab takes place.  Allow students to complete their hypothesis and ask them to read over the procedure again for homework. The following day, do a quick overview of the lab by letting students summarize what you discussed the day prior, quiz them with a few of the most important questions and then set your kids loose! They should be ready and set to go.

2. Work Together: Don't be afraid to work WITH your students in coming up with a feasible hypothesis or logical conclusions. Students can still develop their own inferences, but when the class brainstorms ideas together, the process can go much more quickly. For summarizing or analysis questions, answer them as a class or allow them to work with their groups. This will speed up the time that's often wasted "thinking stuff up" and will help lead those that were a little lost down the right path to the big picture.

3. Pre-fill and Pare Down: Another great way to fit labs into shortened classes is to have graph paper partially filled out with the correct data range so students can easily create a title, identify their x and y axes and fill in their plot points (provide two versions and you have a great differentiation tool you can use for your students who just don't quite get science or math concepts as quickly). Where possible, reduce the number of trials during an experiment. You can also limit results and conclusion questions to those that are most important to the lab. Simple recall assessments are time wasters.

4. Split it up: If you're able, complete one half of the lab one day and the other half on the following day - this is especially helpful for labs like dissection when exploration is really necessary to gain a full understanding of the concept at hand. Wrap up specimen in a gallon ziplock bag with the group name written on the outside for storage overnight. Have time to complete the lab, but not the analysis? Ask students to answer important questions for homework. The next day, spend 5-10 minutes reviewing the main takeaway of the experiment and revisit any misconceptions students may have. Whatever end point you reach, be sure to incorporate a little time for closure because you never want to leave your students hanging when it comes to understanding the big picture.

5. 'Round Robin quizzes: Dissection is a major component of what life science and biology teachers do, and ensuring identification and understanding of the many working parts of an organism is key to success in our labs. Unfortunately, time constraints often limit our ability to ensure each student sees each organ and understands location and function - to this end, we do group quizzes. Create a quick checklist that you can hand out to each group and have students put their names at the top of the sheet.  Prior to exploration, inform your kids that a verbal group quiz is how they'll be graded for their participation. The checklist can also be a guiding handout, with a graphic of what kids should be locating. Once you've visited each group and observed they are on the right path, use the last 15-20 minutes of the lab to visit each group and quiz the students about where each structure is located and what the function of each is. It saves time and your sanity as you try to assess their level of involvement in and comprehension of the lab.  

6.  Demonstrate it: When time is really crunched, there is no better way than to do the lab yourself with students assisting throughout the process.  Tell students the problem at hand and have them help you brainstorm the best procedure to achieve the desired results.  Set-up the lab at your desk and ask for student volunteers to help complete the lab.  Formulate a hypothesis and answer analysis questions together as a class.  While it may not be as hands-on for the students, in a shortened class period it can be a real time-saver and still allows the students the experience of the concept you are demonstrating.   

Please feel free to comment below and let us know what kind of shortcuts you've incorporated in your classroom when you're in a time crunch in science! 

Cutting Corners - 9 Time & Energy Savers for the Science Lab

Labs are the epitome of science class. They provide meaningful, real-life experiences in a hands-on manner which allows students to dig deeper into the material. They are wonderful learning opportunities for students, but boy are they time consuming for teachers! The prep work to create and set up the lab, buying (sometimes expensive) materials, getting students familiar with the background information and procedure, going over safety precautions, the lab time itself, the review of concepts they should come away with, and lastly clean up can be overwhelming and exhausting. Labs are always 100% worth the effort but they can be a daunting task, especially if you are required to do labs several times a week.

We thought long and hard about how we made lab time work for us, especially when it comes to set up and take down. Below is a list we've come up with that will help you cut corners to save time and energy, but not at the cost of the lab experience itself.

1. Team work: Chances are you collaborate with several other science teachers in the same grade level. Why not plan ahead and come up with several labs each month that ALL of you will do with your classes. Share the responsibility of set up, best practices, and clean up, especially if you have a common lab space.  The team can set up when the first class is ready to experiment and clean up when the last class of the week is done. This setup also allows you to share lab equipment, consumables, and other supplies. If something is expensive, split the cost amongst the lot of you and save some cash.

2. Student helpers: If you have kids you trust and they have a free period or maybe have finished a test early in another class, by all means, ask if they can assist you! Start this process early on in the year and you'll find yourself with a handful of students you can trust to follow your directions implicitly. Maybe they can even arrive to school early to help or stay late to clean up. Better yet, start a science lab or experimentation club and part of their duties is assisting you in the prep work! Kids get great experience learning lab materials and procedures and you save time!

3. Parent assistance:  As middle grades teachers, we are less likely to reach out to the parents of our students to ask for help. We're here to tell you to DO IT! Send out an email blast or newsletter requesting materials, donations, volunteers, and if your school would allow, money to purchase the things you need for your room. You might be surprised by how many responses you get from stay at home parents, working moms and dads, grandparents, and even aunts and uncles who would LOVE to spend a day or class period in your room assisting you, especially if they can see their child in the school environment.  This will really come in handy during dissection days when more than one pair of eyes is essential with all of those sharp instruments!

4. Lab stations to the rescue:  Everyone will tell you that lab stations are a must in the middle school classroom. When designing your classroom layout, envision how you would want labs to flow.  Identify your stations with a number, name or some other moniker that will be easily referred to throughout the year.  Then, think about how students will use the stations:  will students remain at one station, or will they move from station to station?  Will they have multiple microscopes to view at their station, or will they have several slides that they will need to swap out as they progress through the lab?  Will students always be assigned to the same station or rotate?  Whatever you decide, know that you can always switch it up depending on the type of lab you are implementing.  

5. Review labs ahead of time:  Go over safety protocol, materials, procedures and expectations the day before the lab.  At the end of the day's lesson, give your students a quiz.  The purpose of this exercise is threefold:  1) Students will already be prepared for the lab the moment they walk in the door the next day,  2) your lab quizzes will let you know if students are truly prepared for the lab, and 3) your quizzes will serve as a perfect guide for creating your lab group leaders - those students who can help facilitate the lab tomorrow with their peers.  

6. Make it visible:  A great way to make sure your students know what they are supposed to be doing when they walk into the room is to project the lab directions on the board, or if technology isn't available, have a copy of the lab directions at each station.  You can also use your projector in a pinch to find microscope or dissection images on the Internet.  Project them to the front of the room to show students what they need to be looking for, or use them for a virtual teacher-led microscope or dissection lab when supplies are limited.

7. Prep lab materials in advance:  In order to ease the stress of set up, we used to arrive to school early the day of the lab to make sure everything was in order. If this doesn't work out, set aside time at the end of the day to prep so when you walk in the next morning, the room is organized and you're not panicking to get things ready.  One key thing we did for our labs was to make our slides and pre-cut our dissection specimen.  For example, if you're doing the famous "e" lab, make your slides in advance by cutting out your newspaper e's and taping them to a glass or plastic slide with a little piece of scotch tape.  For frog or earthworm dissections, shave some time off of the actual "dissection" portion by making the first few major ventral and transverse incisions in your students' specimens, giving them more time to explore the specimen and make meaningful connections with the material they are learning rather than rushing through the lab to get finished.  

8. Get organized: remember you will probably do this lab again next year. After a lab is completed, don't hurriedly stuff things back into your closet. Take the time to organize your lab closet by topic covered. Take your supplies from each experiment and keep them together in a tub or bin. Label the bin with the name of the lab and even place a folder with your lab handouts in the bin just in case your paper filing system fails you. This way, the following year, your activities are grab and go!

9. Plan for the future:  Once you have a few years of teaching under your belt, you'll hopefully have a general idea of what you want to teach and how you want to teach it. Create a planner or calendar and visualize the topics you would like to cover and activities you would like to do and realistically fit them into your schedule. Once you do this, you can ensure that there are no surprises. Get lab equipment and supplies in advance, send out notes and emails home if you need assistance, and make sure copies are made and materials are ready to go for lab day. 

We hope this list will help keep you on the track to running a smooth and efficient science classroom. Got any other helpful tips? Please comment below and let us know!

Next time we'll tell you a little bit about how we fit lab experiences into shortened or altered class periods and make the most of the small amount of time we have for experimentation in the middle grades!

 

Why you should consider Interactive Notebooks in the Middle Grades

Why hello there! It’s Lindsay here and I’m going to share with you a bazillion reasons (ok a few) why you should stop what you’re doing RIGHT NOW and get on the INB train.

I’ll be honest. When I first started using Interactive Notebooks in my intervention classes, my students looked at me like I was nuts. They were big bad middle schoolers for goodness sake and I was asking them to cut, glue and color on a daily basis.

At first glance, interactive notebooks can appear:

1. childish
2. unnecessary
3. time consuming
4. unorganized
5. messy

Before I actually used interactive notebooks, I was a big believer in all of those things. I didn’t understand the point of using them and didn’t know of any teachers in my building who had them in their rooms. It wasn’t until I started reading up on them online (years ago, before they were cool) that I realized their true potential.

Big Kid INBs To avoid making your students feel like they have a glorified coloring book, try making any of the cutsey stuff optional. If part of their grade includes color, they’re going to feel like they are in preschool. Encourage neatness of course, but don’t require “decorations.”

A Necessary Tool No matter which subject you teach, an interactive notebook can be an amazingly valuable tool.  Regular notes are boring and regular binders are disorganized. Notes, activities and examples are not kept together by skill in binders. They are grouped instead by the type of resource. Pages easily rip from binders and things get lost. INBs keep everything organized, under control and intact.

A Time Saving Tool If you don’t prepare yourself and your students, interactive notebooks CAN be time consuming. If you use them correctly and give your students some of the responsibility, you can actually save time by using them. To save time cutting, I try to make the majority of my INB resources have straight lines. This allows me to immediately cut multiple copies of something on a standard paper cutter as soon as they come off the copier. By eliminating the need for students to cut every single thing, you can save a ton of time. If your students are prepared for class each day with scissors, glue and colored pencils (or crayons if that’s your thing) no time will be wasted gathering or returning materials during class. Many INB resources are created as outlines, so students are not taking notes from scratch. Instead, they’re filling in key words, completing activities and highlighting important things.

Amazing Organization As I mentioned before, INBs are insanely organized. I use a table of contents for each and every unit, not just one for the entire notebook. This helps kids narrow down what they’re looking for and find it easily. I also make my contents sheets have tabs so students can easily see what unit they’re looking for.

 

Not as Messy As You Think Yes, glue can get messy if not used properly. Yes, you will have that student who will think it’s cute to use as much glue as possible. That same student will quickly learn how difficult it is to write on a page that’s soggy and lumpy. Glue bottles are better than glue sticks because they hold forever and ever. Glue sticks just don’t hold that well. I honestly prefer two sided tape because there is zero mess, but for many that’s just not practical because of the cost. If you set clear expectations from the beginning when it comes to the ways to glue properly (small dots around the perimeter of the pages) and dispose of scraps, the mess doesn’t have to exist. To handle scraps, I purchased a few super cheap plastic trash cans (bathroom sized) from the store and set them near the student desks. Most students didn’t even have to get out of their seat to be able to dispose of their scraps.

Stay tuned for another INB post in which we all share why we feel like INBs are a valuable resource specific to our content area!

Hands on Learning in the Middle Grades

Middle School is the divide between High School and Elementary School. It is the bridge from childhood to adulthood. Students grow and our expectations of what they can handle in the classroom grow along with them. Many teachers feel as though students should learn to listen to lectures, take notes while the teacher is talking and be able to function in a more "grown up student" environment.

When I started teaching 8th grade math, I had that philosophy. My students were getting ready to go into high school, so why not treat them that way? Rarely did I incorporate "fun" in my classroom. I followed along with the scope and sequence perfectly and used on the resources provided for me by the district. My students that year only worked from their textbook, note-taking guide or chapter resource book. I think this HUGE mistake on my part may have been one reason my first year as a middle school teacher was absolutely horrible less than stellar.

It's true that students in middle school are no longer "babies". They're also not quite adults either. When I started incorporating hands on activities in my classroom, I saw a HUGE change in student engagement, success and behavior. My assumption that 8th graders would think coloring was stupid was very, very wrong. The first time I gave my students a coloring worksheet as classwork, they looked at me like I was crazy. "But Mrs. Perro, we are in 8th grade. We don't color anymore." My reply, "Oh really? You do today!" Even the students who acted like my coloring worksheets were silly sat there and made sure their work was nothing short of a masterpiece. Did I use up a little bit of instructional time by having them color? Yep, I sure did. Was it worth it? Absolutely. Students in middle school have SO much pressure on them. They're pressured by their bodies, that are changing every single day. They're pressured by their peers to be "cool." They're pressured by their teachers to grow up. They're pressured by coaches and parents to keep grades up and participate in extra curricular activities. Giving them a 5 minute break to color isn't going to make the difference between whether or not they pass or fail that class or that standardized test.

My coloring pages eventually progressed to classroom competition games, puzzles and stations. Yep, stations in 8th grade. Insane right? Nope! My students LOVED being able to get up and move around the classroom. I started working with the theory that, if I was bored making an answer key, my students would be bored doing the work in class. Of course, there's a time and a place for seat work that doesn't involve coloring or scissors. There is a time for formal assessment, independent learning and quiet time. But, there is also a time for fun. I challenge you this school year, if you don't already, to incorporate more hands on activities in your classroom. Whether you teach science, history, Spanish, music, math, or any of the other classes offered in the middle grades, there are plenty of activities you can find or create to keep your students engaged.

Other In The Middle bloggers incorporate Hands on Learning in their classrooms below:

In middle school, if Social Studies isn't hands-on, interactive, and engaging, the kids simply aren't interested.  No matter what the content is, my number one goal is to get students excited and genuinely interested about what they are learning.  In my classroom, students are producers, detectives, and debaters.  We complete video projects and murder mystery investigations, while conducting simulations and class debates.  Students explain ideas and concepts through weekly "town meetings," write historical essays with document-based evidence, and compile weekly learning goal logs where they demonstrate on-going understandings.  To go along with my teaching style, this will be the fifth year my students will be participating in the National History Day program. All of this places students at the center of instruction to create an active, hands-on learning experience.   I am not a lecture teacher.  I am not a textbook teacher.  I am not a PowerPoint teacher.  Not that there is anything "wrong" with these methods, but I simply believe there are better, more interactive ways to get students involved in their learning.  After all, what truly is more exciting: listening to a teacher speak for 45 minutes about what happened on England's first attempt to setup a colony in North America or placing students in the role of CSI investigators as they investigate what happened to the "Lost Colony?  

Science naturally lends itself to hands-on learning, but nothing is more hands-on and current in the science education world than Interactive Notebooks.  While some have been notebooking for years, others are just beginning to try it out in their classrooms.  For those novices just starting out, you may want to consider the Interactive Science Notebook as a different way to take notes, organize information, and provide your students with a one-stop location for all important reference materials. With this in mind, transitioning to interactive notebooks won't be much of a stretch for you.  We all know that middle schoolers are the WORST at keeping up with everything, but your odds of having organized students are drastically increased, simply by having all of the information glued into one location, instead of spread between binders, backpacks, and lockers.  

If you have started using notebooks already, but are looking to do more with them in the current school year, I would suggest checking out these resources:

     

Science Interactive Notebook Resources:

     Science Teaching Junkie’s Interactive Notebook products

     The Science Penguin's Interactive Notebook products

ELA Interactive Notebook Resources:

     Lovin' Lit's Interactive Notebook products

     Middle Grades Maven's Interactive Notebook products

Math Interactive Notebook Resources:

     Lindsay Perro's Foldables and Graphic Organizers

     Runde's Room Interactive Math Journal

Social Studies Interactive Notebook Resources:

     Brain Wrinkles' Reflections for the Interactive Notebook

     To The Square Inch's Interactive Notebook products

If you are the expert at notebooking, I would still encourage you to check out what's new and current out there.  After many years of notebooking, I thought I'd probably seen it all and done it all, but I am continually amazed at the resources being created everyday and the new ideas popping up.  Just two years ago I was shown FlipOuts and I was amazed at the possibilities.  Check out my blog post about FlipOuts.  

Bottom line - continue to learn, grow, and share your knowledge and ideas with other teachers.  Don't be afraid to try something new in your classroom, especially the things that are working well in millions of other classrooms.  Get your students actively learning with Interactive Notebooks!