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.
For each pair of students make up a small tray containing the following -
blob of plasticine
piece of paper
a marble
a balloon
rubber band
The students test each material and then record their findings on the worksheet.
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 Bunuru which occurs in February/March. 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 Bunuru.
https://thescienceworkshop.weebly.com/bunuru.html
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.
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.
This factual text contains the main features of ants. It includes
body parts and structure
release of pheromones
how they use their different body parts
the ant colony
There are plenty of literacy and science activities that could facilitated with this text.
This activity was introduced to start off a new unit on birds and to generate discussion and ideas about the student’s prior knowledge about birds. Students were placed in teams of two to work collaboratively. Some of the question triggers -
List animals who fly?
List animals who have beaks?
List animals who make nests?
List animals who sing?
List animals who can sing?
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.
This is a powerpoint of 11 slides. Each slide has a true or false question about robots eg, humans can go anywhere a robot can go, a robot could save your life one day and most robots are working out in space. The question on each slide provides a stimulus to encourage students to think about the diverse role of robots in the 20th century world.
The students were taken on a discovery tour of our Australian school bushland to identify evidence of animal habitats. The students had to circle ‘yes’ of ‘no’ as to whether there was evidence that the depicted animals lived in the bushland. We then returned to discuss their findings.
This resource could be used in any Australian school yard or alternatively take your students on an excursion to a local park.
Investigate the surface tension of liquids by following the lesson steps on this set of slides.
You will need
milk
shallow dish
detergent
food colouring
cotton bud or popstick
When the cotton bud touches the milk, the colours shift and swirl away from the deterent and a colourful pattern is formed. This is because the detergent breaks the surface tension of the liquid.
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 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.
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 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.
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.
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 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
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 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