I Teach Science a Half Hour at a Time

(Once a week)

Why?  That's how our school works.

I teach at a small, hybrid school in Carson City, Nevada.  The hybrid part means our students do most of their course work on line at home, but come on campus once a week to meet with their teachers.  I have a dedicated half hour to work with them each week.*

Um, that's not a half hour for Biology and a different half hour for Chemistry.  That's a half hour for all the science students together.

What do I do in my half hour?  I can get a surprising amount done, actually.  Instead of working on specific details in each course, I do activities that address big ideas that cross science curriculum.  (I do admit to a bias towards Chemistry, since it is my specialty.)

This blog keeps track of my weekly learning activities.  Please feel free to use any of them as is, or adapt them to meet your needs.  (I probably stole the ideas from somewhere myself.)

Most of the activities here can be used as part of a larger lesson in the classroom.  In fact, they will probably take more than a half hour.  I compress teaching time by having everything set up before the students come into my lab.  I also do most of the clean up by myself.

I am only posting the activities that students understood fairly well, were relatively cheap, and didn't require any special equipment. 

Since this is my first adventure in the blog-o-sphere, I hope my posts are useful.  If you have any suggestions to improve the content, please let me know.

-Lynn
 

*Many of our students come in every day, actually, and I coach those students through their course material one-on-one.  Also, all my students don't come in on the same day.  I have the luxury of only working with about 12 per half hour session at a time.