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 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 investigation is a lot of fun for young children.
You will need one old CD rom or DVD for each child.
Take the children outside on a sunny day. If you’re in Australia make sure that the children are wearing hats. LOL No hat no play!
Locate the Sun. Make sure that the children are standing in the full Sun.
The idea is to capture the sunlight by angling the CD rom or DVD and then shining the light into a shaded area.
I had the children stand on the oval and then shine the light onto the school’s ‘undercover’ area. There were plenty of objects like benches and bins for the children to shine their light. The area I chose also had plenty of people coming and going so the children were able to shine their light onto them.
This activity can be a be tricky and you will find many children saying ‘mine doesn’t work’.
To conclude and to ensure that every child can shine a sunbeam, I asked small groups of children to stand in the shaded undercover area while the reminder of the class sone a ‘disco’ onto them.
We then returned to class and I demonstrated on the whiteboard how to draw a ray diagram to show how light travelled from the Sun to the DVD or CD rom and then onto an object or person.
On the worksheet the children can draw themselves holding the CD rom or DVD and the object/person that they shone light onto. They can add ray arrows to show how light travelled. And finally write their own sentence about the investigation.
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.
This is a powerpoint to review a chromatography investigation.
You would need to set up your own chromatography experiment with your students then use the slides to review and conclude the activity.
There are several chromatograhy investigations to be browsed on the internet. One of my favourites is the chromatograhy dancer.
This powerpoint includes five slides to guide your student to set up a decomposition investigation in a small take away plastic container. each team of students will need a small piece of apple, paper, plastic and cloth.
Once the student have covered their materials with soil or potting mix and secured the container they will construct a table in their Science book and write predictions for the materials.
This powerpoint guides your students to experience 4 different chemical and physical changes. The experiments that you will demonstrate are
Melting chocolate
Freaky hand
Making butter
Rainbow milk
The resource includes a final slide for students to ansser questions and review the demonstrations.
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 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 is a powerpoint to guide students to conduct their own research about a volcano.
The students can create their own powerpoint or Keynote and use the information on the slides to guide their research. The information on the slides include
Volcano name and location
Which country and continent is volcano?
Type of volcano and number of eruptions over the past 500 years.
Closest city and population
Distance closest city is from volcano and date of last eruption
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.
For this investigation each team of students will need
a small container of sea shells.
a piece of coloured card A3 size.
textas
There are three slides in this resource
Title slide
Suitable to for Years 1-3 students. The students complete several sorting and classifying activities. They arrange their shells onto their A3 coloured card then use the words on the powerpoint to label their collection.
Slide suitable for Years 4-6. For this activity the students have a few more challenging tasks.
To conclude this activity the students can take a photo of their display with their iPads and upload to their digital online learning platform - eg Seesaw, Google Classroom, Freshgrade.
Delight your students with this chemical and physical changes quiz. Students can work in teams or individually to answer 10 quiz questions. The questions are presented on slides with images.
Here is the answer key
Perfume evaporating on your skin - physical.
Butter melting - physical.
Digesting food - chemical.
Burning fuel in a lawnmower - this one is NOT a physical change.
burn (combustion) - chemical, crumble - physical, melt - physical, rust - chemical, crush - physical, freeze - physical, grind - physical, rot - chemical
Fogging a mirror with your breath - physical.
Mending a broken bone - chemical.
Paper ripping - physical.
Glass cracking when placed in cold water - physical.
Slicing potatoes to cook fries - physical
The students were given the following materials to complete this investigation
a ruler
a large foldback clip with the steel pin removed - this is the fulcrum
several objects -small blocks, erasers, sharpeners etc easily sourced around the classroom. Plus a few heavier objects for investigation 3.
Investigation 1 - First class lever
The students set up their equipment to balance two objects
Investigation 2 - Second class lever
The students set up their equipment with the fulcrum at one end of the ruler and then balance two objects.
Investigation 3 - Third class lever
The students set up their equipment to lift a load.
In their Science Journal the students choose two of the investigation and draw a diagram including these labels - fulcrum, object and ruler.
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.
To use this resource firstly print off slides 2- 12. There are 10 stations. You will need to provide the materials at each station for the students complete the investigations.
Here is what you need to prepare
Slide 2 Iron filings and sand - in a tray add sand and a few spoons of iron filings. Students use a magnet to collect the iron filings.
Slide 3 Fizzing tablet and water - glass of water and a fizzing tablet such as Aspro Clear.
Slide 4 Inflate a balloon with vinegar - bottle, measuring cups, funnels, balloon, vinegar, bicarb soda.
Slide 5 Glowsticks - 2 glow sticks, 2 large beakers, 2 thermometers, 2 pieces of black card, icy cold water from the fridge, hot water from a kettle.
Slide 5 Burning candle - candle, large glass jar, matches.
Slide 6 Autumn leaves - a tray of autumn leaves, crayons, lithograph paper
Slide 7 Melting ice investigation - 2 petri dishes, ice cubes, salt, measuring spoons.
Slide 8 Milk and lemon juice - lemon juice, pipette, milk, glass beaker.
Slide 9 Investigating nails - 2 trays of nails (rusted and not rusted).
Slide 10 Plasticine - various colours of plasticine.
Slide 11 Chalk - various colours of chalk, paper
Print the recording sheet on Slide 12.
Allocate the students to the different stations and allow them to complete the investigation and record their findings on the worksheet.
Gather students together to share findings.
If you have time rotate students to another station.
Gather students together and conclude by sharing the Conclusions on the PowerPoint.
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
This is an interactive investigation where the students are taken to a bushland setting in Perth Western Australia or have access to a bushland area on their school site. The students use the worksheet to guide their investigation about the Noongar season of Birak which occurs in December/January. There are several Noongar Six Season posters that can be purchased or found online. I purchased mine from SERCUL in Beckenham.
Follow this link to my website for some detailed information about Birak.
https://thescienceworkshop.weebly.com/birak.html
I organised to borrow a fossils kit from Scitech Perth. The kit contained various fossils - pleuroceras,ammonite, tribolite. The students had to examine the fossils and then record their findings on the table.
This is a powerpoint of fungi images found in Perth Bushlands in Western Australia. It accompanied the IWB lesson on mushrooms from the Children's University of Manchester. Students were given several specimens of &'shop bought mushrooms&'; to draw and label.
This is a resource to set up on display in your science classroom. Each fortnight a different photo is displayed. The students guess what the photo is and submit their entries. This resource includes labels to set up your Mystery Science Photo display poster, how to construct the poster and how to make the shoebox for the entries. The resource includes enough photos for a 10 week term or two terms if you choose to put up one photo per fortnight. Before placing you photo on display be sure to snip off the answer located at the bottom of the page and place it someone safe so that you will remember what the answer is.