Hey teacher friends…
I am writing this blog post as a result of a recent request submitted on my Facebook Fanpage. A special shoutout to Kimberly for the idea. I posted a few pictures from a science lesson I had my kiddos create from a product I purchased on TPT on my Facebook Fanpage and a follower had suggested I make a blog post explaining what I had done…so taha! Here it is…
I am currently (no pun intended) working on the Electricity unit with both my grade 6 French Immersion and grade 6 English Prime classes. More specifically, we’re covering scientists who have made significant contributions in the field of electricity.
I sat down the night before I was to teach the material to plan out my lesson plan when I had remembered, I had purchased a product… which if memory served me correctly… had just the perfect supplemental material I would need.
I quickly searched my TPT purchases folder and found it…and sure enough…there it was…the exact material I needed…and my plan began to come together.
The Teacherspayteachers product I purchased was Electricity & Magnetism from Nitty Gritty Science, and the supplemental material was actually images of all the key scientists who had made significant contributions in the field of electricity…eureka! Exactly what I was looking for.
I know I’ve said it in the past, and I know I’ll say it again…there are so many creative teachers out there who create these awesome products on teacherspayteachers…When I can’t find what I want, I’ll create my own, but in a pinch or if its available with one click saving me time, or sometimes I’m just looking for a different perspective… teacherspayteachers is my go to.
So, in the original lesson from the product I purchased, the scientists are to be used on a dice, however, seeing as though I had already used a dice format earlier in the year for a different project, I decided to change things up and opted for my kiddos to instead create timelines using the images instead…See images below.
I just loved this activity
I just loved this activity because I was able to do this particular lesson with my grade 6 English class as well as my French Immersion classes with very few modifications for the French class.
The lesson included 8 scientists along with their names and the year of their contributions. This was perfect… All I had to do was provide students with large paper and a photocopy of the scientists.
So here’s what I did…
I first created a simple PowerPoint for my students which included
(1) Explanation of the project
(2) A rubric for evaluation
(3) Classroom expectation
(I’d love to share the power point with you all, but it’s riddled with licensed clip art 🙁 and I certainly wouldn’t want a cease and desist letter showing up in my inbox…I’ll try and get my husband to re-do my power point using his custom clip art…and see if I can twist his arm to let me share that with you fine folks…make sure, if you haven’t already, sign up for my newsletter, as that’s where I share all my goodies…but I digress…)
Students were then given a choice of working with a partner or tackling this project by themselves. Knowing my kiddos, I could have bet the farm I would know who would choose to partner up and who who rather strike out on their own.
Anyhow, I went on to explain to my kiddos that they had the option of using the pictures I supplied or they could get creative and design their own or they search the Internets (as my mom calls it…lol) and print off their own.
Most of my kiddos used the ones which were in the Nitty Gritty Science product and I was totally fine with that as they chose to focus more of their time and efforts researching the scientist’s accomplishments. Which was the projected outcome of the lesson plan anyway.
So what do you think? What are some of the different ways which you have taught this section of the electricity unit? I’d love to hear your thoughts by commenting below.
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