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Solar Oven Lesson Plan

  Building solar ovens is a really engaging project for students. (And living in Phoenix, there are only a few months were you CAN’T build one!) I did this activity with students when we learned about forms of energy and heat transfer. You can choose to have students work on

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Catalase Enzyme Lab

Chances are your biochemistry unit is not a student favorite. I often hear “why are we learning chemistry in biology class?” But to really understand how cells work, students need to understand macromolecules. (If you need some biochemistry lesson ideas, check out this blog post). Luckily, there are fun labs

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Tips for Teaching on a Block Schedule

As if teaching mid-pandemic wasn’t already hard enough, this past year my district moved to block schedule. I went from over a dozen years of teaching 50 minute classes to being thrown into 93 minute classes. Over an hour and a half! It turned my world upside down. Here’s the

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Mineral Teaching Resources

I hear from a lot of teachers that teaching rocks and minerals is booooring (I beg to differ!)I have two blog posts for you- this one with resources to help you teach minerals and a second to help you teach rocks. Side note: I want to point out that there

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Geologic Time Teaching Resources

Geologic time is one of the last topics I cover in my biology class. We discuss it briefly throughout the year when we learn about ecological succession and evolution, but we don’t take a deeper dive until the end of the  year. I absolutely LOVE any excuse to get out

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Using Legos to model science concepts

I’m a big fan of using models to demonstrate science concepts. When students can visually see a concept, it makes it significantly easier to understand. For example- if you ask students about the components of the atmosphere, they tend to think oxygen is the most abundant. Here is an easy

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Dendrochronology Lesson Plans

Dendrochronology is the study of tree rings. Tree ring data can provide us information from the year they formed, including what the climate and atmospheric conditions were like. Scientists most commonly use living trees to collect data, but data can also be taken from archeological sites and even sunken ships. 

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Science Themed Holiday Ornaments

If you have some spare time before Christmas break and want to do something fun, first off- congrats! I always seem to be squeezing everything in before finals and barely have time to review much less throw in some fun activities.  One fun thing you can do with your students

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Cell Theory Microscope Lab

Teaching the cell theory? If you just throw a bunch of names at your students, chances are they aren’t going to remember them. How can you make this topic more interesting? I like having students actually SEE what these scientists discovered (yes, you will need microscopes). In this cell theory

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Cellular Respiration Resources

As teachers, we all have that one topic we hate to teach. For me, it’s photosynthesis and cellular respiration. They learn the basics in middle school: plants need water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight, and in turn they create oxygen and glucose. Then glucose gets broken down and turns into energy.

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Photosynthesis Teaching Resources

As teachers, we all have that one topic we hate to teach. For me, it’s photosynthesis and cellular respiration. They learn the basics in middle school: plants need water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight, and in turn they create oxygen and glucose. Eventually glucose gets broken down and turns into energy.

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