Help your students master analyzing graphs and diagrams and writing claim evidence reasoning scientific explanations with these free practice problems
I try to plan out my next week’s lessons before I head out on Friday. But life usually gets in the way, and so it’s usually Saturday or Sunday morning, trying to figure out what I’m going to teach and get it all done before the kids wake up, which
Life is about making mistakes and learning from them. Anytime you try something new, you are going to make mistakes. It is an unavoidable part of life. Science is no different. Every discovery you teach this year sits on top of a pile of failed experiments and ideas that turned
I have always been a fan of teaching the scientific method. Plus, knowing food was the key to my students’ hearts, still is, I loved using candy to help them learn about the scientific method. Fast forward 28 years, and that is still what I am doing. However, I have
Picture the first week of school. Instead of a syllabus and a seating chart, your students walk into a crime scene. There’s a case to solve, evidence taped to the board, and a room full of kids who suddenly forgot they were nervous about the first day. They’re arguing about
Why AI literacy matters for our students, and a few simple ways we can start teaching it. More than half of our students are already using AI. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that more than half of teens say they have used an AI chatbot to help with
I’m just going to put this out there. AI isn’t here to replace great teaching. It’s here to support it. Think of AI as your teaching assistant helping you plan lessons faster, personalize learning for your students, provide meaningful feedback, and spend less time on repetitive tasks so you can
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
Help guide your students understand how to write CER paragraphs with these sample practice problems
