I am a Primary Science teacher in Perth Australia. I enjoy developing resources for my students that encourage hands on inquiry and investigation. I would like to see my students develop a life long passion for Science and to become active advocates at conserving and protecting the Earth's precious resources.
I am a Primary Science teacher in Perth Australia. I enjoy developing resources for my students that encourage hands on inquiry and investigation. I would like to see my students develop a life long passion for Science and to become active advocates at conserving and protecting the Earth's precious resources.
This is a powerpoint, youtube clip and worksheet that explains to students how to set up a fair test to investigate coral bleaching. Students will take two marine shells, weigh each shell then place one shell in a bowl of tap water and the other shell in a bowl of vinegar. Over the next week the students make observations and record the changes to each shell. There is also a worksheet to accompany this powerpoint. The worksheet is called ‘Investigating Coral Bleaching student worksheet’ . The students will make their own conclusions about the effect of Carbon Emissions on our coral reef ecosystems. The worksheet can be adjusted so that the investigation runs over a sorter period eg, one week.
Students will investigate the following question
‘How much soil is blown away when we use a straw to blow consistently on a landscape for 20 seconds?’
Students will take two containers and using a spoon fill each container to the top with soil from the garden. Then leave one container ‘dry’ and use a spray bottle to ‘dampen’ the soil in the second container so that it is moist. Students will weigh the dry soil and record the weight.
To conduct the investigation one student places the dry container at the end of an A3 piece of paper and sets the timer to 20 seconds.
The student places the tip of the straw at one end of the container and blows across the soil landscape for 20 seconds. They are modelling the effect of a strong wind.
The student weighs the container a second time (after blowing) and records the weight
Now repeat for the second (moist) container.
The powerpoint explains how to conduct this activity and includes review questions.
For this investigation you will need to collect a very small amount of beach sand from your closest beach. Place some beach sand in very shallow trays. The students will be making a ‘sticky tape’ slide and then observe their slide under a microscope or magnifiers. There are ten slides in this resource which will guide the students into understand the components of beach sand and how it contains carbonate and no carbonate materials. The highlight is using drops of vinegar into a sample of beach sand and making observations to see if there is a reaction.
This product is a 7 slide presentation about owl pellets and how they are formed. It guides students to design and construct a small animal using Lego that could be a food source for an owl such as a rodent, frog, cricket, spider, moth, centipede. Students must build their animal and then create instructions by setting out the drawings of the Lego pieces on 1cm grid paper. You can also take a photo of their completed Lego animal to assist them with remembering how to build it. It conclude the lesson the students pull apart their Lego animal and pack it into a zip lock bag along with their instructions. In the follow up lesson the students swap their packages with another team and using the instructions and with help from the photos, try to build the animal.
This resource is a powerpoint to teach students about the different ways that fish move and what their bodies are covered in. Teachers could use this tool in several ways
as a factual text with each student choosing one species and conducting their own research about their chosen fish.
drawing a detailed picture of the fish with annotations.
teachers could get their students to draw a table in their Science Journals and use the information in the slides to classify different feature for each fish eg how is the body covered, how does it move, where is it found (in rock pools or deep ocean) etc.
This resource is a powerpoint to teach students about fish adaptations and how fish survive in their habitat. Teachers could use this tool in several ways
As a factual text with each student choosing one species and conducting their further research about the adaptations of their chosen fish.
Drawing a detailed picture of the fish with annotations to explain the adaptations.
Teachers could get their students to draw a table in their Science Journals and use the information in the slides to classify different features for each fish eg how is the body covered, how does it move, where is it found (in rock pools or deep ocean), how it finds it’s food etc
To conduct this investigation with your class you will need two varieties of fish scales from two different species. This is so the students can compare two of the four main types of fish scale.
You can remove my images of herring and perch and replace with fish species that suit the ocean or waterways where you live.
The students will conduct their investigation and record their findings by drawing a detailed picture of their fish scale and identifying important features such as
•shape,
•thickness
•colour
•size
After careful observation of their fish scale under a microscope the students should be able to compare their scale to the diagrams on the powerpoint and be able to identify if the scale is placoid, ganoid, ctenoid or cycloid.
This is a powerpoint to guide students in an investigation on melting 4 different materials such as
a small piece of cheese
small piece of butter
4 choc buttons
a metal bolt
The powerpoint slides include the components of ‘fair testing’, developing an investigation question, a list of materials, how to set up the investigation and a slide of review questions
Part One
Commence the lesson sharing the story of the ‘little house with no doors or windows but with a star inside’. If you Google the story you will find plenty of versions on the internet.
Part Two
In this investigation each student is given one half of an apple and a ruler.
The students complete the following tasks about the apple
Label your drawing with these words
leaf
stem
core
flesh
skin
seed
My apple has _____________ seeds.
My apple is __________ high.
My apple is ____________wide.
Write two sentences describing your apple.
Part Three
Investigation - What can you put on an apple to stop it from turning brown?
Students conduct their own investigation with an apple to see which liquid is best at preventing it from turning brown.
This Science investigation tests how powerful the sun is at drying out a piece of wet paper towel. Students set up two investigations to compare sunlight and shade. Students record how many minutes it takes for the paper towel to dry.
There is a powerpoint to accompany this activity with a slide of review questions - Sunlight and shade questions.
This bundle is a set of Manager, Speaker and Director badge inserts that can fit into plastic name holders. The document is in Word so that you can adjust the outlines to fit your name holders.
Bread mould investigation powerpoint
This is a powerpoint to guide your students at setting up a bread mould investigation.
It includes the following slides
what do you know about mould and what things effect mould growth
procedure for setting up the investigation
prediction
variables
developing the investigation question
presenting results and reviewing the investigation.
Bread Mould investigation worksheet - this can be found as a free resource on my shop
Students were placed into teams of three and given a slice of bread to place into a zip lock bag. We then discussed the different locations around the school where they could leave their investigation for a week to encourage bread mould to grow. Do you think bread mould would prefer warm, cold, moist or dry environments? During the week the students were encouraged to make daily observations. At the conclusion of the activity the students completed the remainder of the worksheet.
Bread mould rubric
This is a rubric to accompany my ‘free’ resource called ‘Bread Mould Investigation’.
Some of the assessable outcomes include
Student predicts the conditons and location that are best for mould growth.
Student observes mould on bread samples with magnifier.
Student attempts to draw a labelled diagram of mould growth.
Student uses word wall to assist when spelling difficult or new words.
Student evaluates findings and completes questions.
Student works cooperatively in a team and performs team role.
This powerpoint resource comes in two parts
Part One - the students are guided to use microscopes to investigate a dry soil sample on a ‘sticky tape slide’. Then they create their own soil solution in a jar. You could set this over 2 x 60 minute lessons.
Part Two - the students having left their solution to ‘settle’ for one week, then draw a diagram (to scale) of the layers in their solution using rulers to measure and magnifiers to observe the layers closely. Allow one hour.
This bundle includes
Investigating with a toy robotic arm
Am I a robot worksheet
The Scribblebot challenge
Designing a medical robot
The Rise of Robots worksheet
Robots review - true or false
The above items can also be purchased individually.