Help your students master analyzing graphs and diagrams and writing claim evidence reasoning scientific explanations with these free practice problems
I’m not the type of teacher who likes to start the first days of school by going over the syllabus and talking about rules. I teach mostly 8th graders, and by now, they know the basic rules. Classroom and school rules really haven’t changed much since they started kindergarten. Now,
A simple daily science bell ringer routine that gets middle schoolers thinking like scientists the second they walk in. The first five minutes of class used to get away from me. I stand at the door every morning saying hi to students as they come in, and some of them
If you have ever searched for resources on teaching CER to English Language Learners or students with IEPs, you have probably noticed something: almost everything out there is written for a general classroom. The assumption is that your students can read the prompt, understand the vocabulary, organize their thinking, and
It is Thursday afternoon. You have a stack of CER paragraphs to grade, and all you can think of is, “Will I be able to get through all of these today without having to stay late or continue working over the weekend?” You open the first one, read it carefully
If you have ever been to a professional development session on teaching CER and walked away thinking “this sounds great, but I have no idea where it fits in my already packed curriculum,” you are not alone. That was a common topic of discussion at lunch when CER was first
It was the Thursday after Thanksgiving break. We had already written more than 20 CER paragraphs since the beginning of the year. I had just spent the class period teaching CER with our first practice problem back from the break. We went through the problem, broke down the reading, analyzed
Teaching heat transfer by conduction, convection, and radiation is one topic that excites my students. It’s important to help them understand how energy moves through our world. I’ve found that using the 5E lesson plan model—Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, and Evaluate—to help me teach thermal energy transfer makes this big
Halloween is my favorite holiday of the year, and I love bringing spooky fun Halloween science activities into my classroom. From bubbling cauldrons to eerie color changing potions, these Halloween chemistry experiments are always a hit. They keep my middle school science students engaged during the long stretch of October
Fall is here and Halloween is on the way. This is the perfect excuse to mix spooky fun with hands-on learning. From floating pumpkins and pumpkin STEM activities to a skeleton project, animal adaptations, and monster genetics, these Halloween science activities will keep your students engaged and excited. #1: Pumpkin
Have you ever considered the potential of dollar store items for teaching engaging simple chemistry activities? These affordable and accessible materials can transform an ordinary classroom into a dynamic science lab. Here’s a guide to simple chemistry experiments you can easily set up, providing students with hands-on learning experiences demonstrating real-world
I have found that my students struggle to write clear claims, evidence to support their claims that includes data from graphs or tables, and reasoning sentences that explain how the evidence supports the claim. This is why I have decided to scaffold how I teach my students how to properly
The engineering design process is an important part of science and STEM education. It helps students think like scientists and develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills. One way to teach it is by having the students design a bridge that can withstand the tremors of an earthquake, structured around the
Help guide your students understand how to write CER paragraphs with these sample practice problems
