Science Teacher Blogs

Welcome to my blog!

Liz Belasic6 Comments

I hope you are enjoying your summer! August will be a busy month as teachers prepare for a new school year. If you are a new teacher, or a veteran teacher, looking for new science lessons and ideas to add to your curriculum, my website is here to help. Everything I have posted is free for you to use in your classroom. All of my Google Slides can be edited to meet your needs – here is a quick tutorial to help you make modifications.

To help you find what you need quickly, there are several options available:

Search box in the upper right corner – click on the magnifying glass and enter key words to find lessons.

Tag cloud – scroll down, on the right you can choose either a topic or standard. Each blog entry also has tags on them to help you find related lessons.

Category Menu – scroll down on the right and look for lessons related to your topic, such as ‘Life Science’ or ‘Skills’

Enjoy the rest of your summer and best wishes for the 2018-19 school year!

 

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Observations Worksheet

Liz Belasic2 Comments
Screen Shot 2017-09-18 at 9.43.37 PM
Quantitative vs Qualitative Observations

Click link for the PDF of this worksheet: Qualitative-vs-Quantititive-Observations

This is a nice review sheet to practice identifying Qualitative and Quantitive observations. Qualitative (think quality) are observations you can’t really put a number on, while Quantitative (think quantity) are observations that are measurable or have a number value. In this exercise, I have the students also underline the word(s) that help them decide if the observation is Qualitative or Quantitative.

For fun, and to review Inferences, I have the students infer what the dog is thinking as s/he listens to the human given directions 🙂

How to edit Google Slides to meet your needs

Liz BelasicLeave a comment

how-to-edit-google-slides-1

I have been getting a lot of requests for editing access to the Google Slides on my blog, so I wrote this tutorial on how to save and edit any of the Google Slides on my website. I can’t permit editing rights because it will change my copy of the slides and your edits will be visible to everyone that visits my blog.

How to edit Google Slides – Step by step tutorial (Public)

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Liz

Color Coding Families on the Periodic Table

Liz Belasic4 Comments
Coloring the Periodic Table (1)
coloringperiodictable1
coloringperiodictable2

This is a fun way to introduce the families of the periodic table and their properties. The students really enjoy watching the video clips from Periodic Table Videos and the experiments performed by the Chemistry Department at the University of Nottingham.

As a class, we found the location of each family, recorded the elements for each family, discussed their properties, color coded the periodic table, and discussed any patterns they noticed.

Materials

  • Google Slides (Public) – updated for 2016 with links to the YouTube videos to view an element in each family
  • Handout – (pdf) students take notes for each family and use this is a reference for further lessons
  • Periodic Table – (Updated 2016 pdf) I like to use this student version of the periodic table from Jefferson Lab for my 6th graders. I photocopy it double sided – one side stays blank while the other side is color coded. If students have binders with a clear pocket on the outside front, I ask that they place it there for quick reference and access.

This activity was featured on the following blog post: The Joy of Chemistry – A Unit in Photos a few years ago. You can read about how she used this lesson in her 3rd grade classroom as part of her Chemistry unit.

Below is a video about Sodium from Periodic Table Videos. They have a lot of great chemistry videos posted for free on their site, be sure to check them out!

RSO Physics 02 – Mass & Buoyancy

Liz BelasicLeave a comment

Thank you for sharing your experience on your blog! Liz

homeschoolsciencegeek

For today’s class we did two different labs. The first one I found while digging for materials for the chemistry class I’l be teaching this fall.  This website, Middle School Science, has a great list of resources for middle school chemistry, including this activity for ‘bottles of stuff.’IMG_3328.jpg I liked this activity because the kids get to bring in a bottle of stuff, they have to guess which ones are more massive and then actually estimate the mass of each bottle.  Since few Americans are familiar with grams, its a bit of challenge to guess the mass of a bottle of legos in grams so I gave them a big bottle that had a mass of 500 grams, a 50 gram brass mass and 5 gram cubes (each cube is a gram).  IMG_3320.jpgThis helped them at least get the right order of magnitude.  Once everybody had their estimates the…

View original post 419 more words