Skills

Under construction – Click on (blog entry) for detailed information for each lesson below

First days of School

  1. Scavenger Hunt – Students will have fun learning where everything is in their new science classroom on the first day of school (blog entry)
  2. I am a scientist – What does a scientist look like? What is your favorite field of science? Students will draw Instagram pictures of themselves as scientists (blog entry)

Lab Safety

  1. SpongeBob Safety Rules and Scenarios Activity – Students will read 5 different unsafe lab scenarios and determine which safety rules SpongeBob and his crew didn’t follow. All resources are posted on my (blog entry).

Lab Equipment

  1. Reading a Triple Beam Balance – students will practice reading and recording values for mass. Worksheet (pdf) and Ohaus website (link) (blog entry)

Team Building

  1. Cup Stacking Challenge – Students will work as a team to complete a series of challenges using cups, string, and a rubber band (Blog entry)
  2. Observations Telephone Game – Can your team find the photograph based on the observations you shared with each other? (blog entry)

Observations

  1. Apple Observations – in this activity, students will learn the importance of adding details to their observations (blog entry)
  2. Hidden Pictures – students will sharpen their visual observation skills and have fun doing so (link) (blog entry)
  3. Observation vs. Inference – The boy in the water – students will learn to distinguish between observations and inferences (Blog entry)
  4. Mystery Footprints – students will observe animal tracks and learn how to differentiate between observations and inferences (blog entry)
  5. D & T Activity – Students uncover an ancient tablet, what does it say? (Blog entry)
    • D & T Activity sheet (pdf), 23 words cut up and placed into envelopes (pdf), and Teacher reference – our 2013 results (pdf)

7 thoughts on “Skills”

  1. michellemarkert1 August 23, 2019 / 11:20 pm

    Hi, I am looking for an activity that helps students with measurements that are precise. It involves colored water and test tubes. If the students follow the directions carefully, they end up with a rainbow. Do you know which activity I am referring to by any chance?

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  2. Judy Marshall January 3, 2017 / 1:09 pm

    You have an acitivity where the students work in groups to create a sentence from a group of words. It is designed to teach them that not all scientists have the same hypothesis? Where would I find the instructions for this activity? This activity is modified from the University of California Museum of Paleontology.

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  3. Anonymous July 30, 2016 / 4:27 pm

    These are such wonderful activities and I have used them in my classroom for the past 5 years. This year we are mandated to use NGSS. Do you know which standard they would correlated with best?

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    • Liz LaRosa July 30, 2016 / 9:19 pm

      Great to hear, thank you! That’s a good question, some of the science skills covered in these lessons (collaboration, observation, safety, etc) are not covered specifically by the NGSS, in other words they don’t have a content standard like “MS-LS1.A” – but are under the Science and Engineering Practices. For example, SEP 8 – Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating, would be covered by some of these lessons. If you look in the ‘tags’ at the end of the blog entry, you will see which SEP are covered by each lesson. Hope that helps! ~Liz

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