Creativity in Mind

I am including my students' favorite labs and activities for a physical science unit covering motion, forces and energy. The Newton's Scooter Lab is a fun and physical to review Newton's Laws of Motion using a skateboard or scooter and the students' own mass. I used my Roller Coaster Lab to review forces and energy and students had a blast designing various coaster 'prototypes.' The Friction lab, while straightforward is a hands-on approach to this concept. Finally, I am including my Energy Tran

Add a little fun and creativity to your Chemistry/Elements/Periodic Table units! Students find this project highly engaging because they have ownership of the word they choose for their bookmark. It's a great way to review concepts related to the Periodic Table. Project description, recording sheets, analysis questions and rubric are all contained in one packet To make the bookmarks, I cut out 5 cm by 18 cm rectangles from a standard sheet of posterboard. You will get about 40 bookmarks per shee

I've done this activity from 7th through 12th grades and it's always entertaining to see what they come up with. Since they're not actually building it, they can really think out of the box (ex- nuclear energy and thermal energy become popular). I usually do this after a lesson on energy and then I will show then the OK Go, "This Too Shall Pass" video as that is the ultimate contraption to model (in my opinion). You may also wish to show them Rube Goldberg examples. Or, modify a bit and simply u

Here is a fun little lab to review the concepts of Graphing and The Scientific Method. Students will also practice taking averages of data. You probably have the supplies in a well-stocked storage room- droppers, cups, water and pennies. Enjoy!

I have started doing weekly readings with vocabulary because our assessments have changed to ones in which decoding from informational text is an imperative skill. This is my reading and vocabulary for The Scientific Method. There are a great deal of vocabulary terms for this unit. Why not add a little extra reinforcement for this tricky topic? Enjoy! :)