Sydney's School Stories

My school uses Foss Science Kits from UC Berkeley ( https://www.fossweb.com/ ). I only teach math and science - but I teach these two subjects 2 times a day. We are so lucky that we have boxed kits for science and have access to awesome curriculum! Science Projects 1. We did a STEM engineering "Build a Parachute" project. Students thought about what materials and sizes would make a good parachute. We used coffee filters, felt, and plastic and later tested the parachutes we designed. The materials all came in the Foss Science Kit, but you can find more information here:  https://www.teachengineering.org/activities/view/design_a_parachute  if you want to do this in your class! 2. Foss mixtures and solutions project. In our mixtures and solutions unit we are thinking about how to create mixtures and separate water from salt, water and gravel, and water and powder. Students learned about evaporation and what a solute is. Here are photos of projects that we did for the las...

This summer I taught a month of summer school for students in my school district. The summer school program focused on STEM & the topic "Under the Sea". I got to design 3 days of curriculum of my choice for 5th/6th grade students. I had 4 different groups of students (about 25 per class) and had each group for 3 days. Check out some of the ideas I implemented in my summer school classroom! Build An Ecosystem Students built an ecosystem in a jar and kept track of changes and temperature of their water over several days.  I went to Petco and bought aquatic plants & sea gravel to put in the jars. My students needed help sticking the roots of the plants in the gravel  Elmer's Build a Boat Challenge   http://elmers.com/lesson-plans/lesson-plan/build-a-boat   The Elmer's Build a Boat Challenge is a fun project for students that places a price value on different materials and asks students to construct a boat that will be both economical and hold a lot o...

The medium sized colored bins from Target are amazing for organizing science materials (you can find them at Target for $3 and Dollar Tree also has great deals on all sized bins.  Put ALL of the materials a group will need in a bin for each group- I do this the night before or have student helpers come in at recess to help gather supplies Give directions BEFORE you pass out the bins and write them in a place that students can easily refer to during the lesson (after the bins are passed out- it is hard for kids to concentrate on teacher directions) Give kids a chance to touch/explore the materials- this gets the "newness" of working with materials out of the way  Have a basket that contains extra supplies that groups might need in the front of the room. If your class can handle getting out of their seat for more supplies, assign a "grabber" for each group - this will be the kid who gets more supplies as needed. If your class is too rowdy or distracted by getting...