The term “DNA” is likely to be familiar to students from TV crime dramas and news reports. Use that familiarity to bring some real-world science into your classroom with a study of DNA and its use in forensic science. The DNA molecule pictured above has two long strands joined… Continue reading
Who’s That Knocking on Christmas Eve? is a beautiful book by Jan Brett, one of our favorite children’s book authors. In this story, naughty trolls threaten a Norwegian Christmas dinner till a passerby with a pet polar bear scares them off. Resources: Jan Brett’s resource pages tell about the research… Continue reading
Google Earth is a terrific resource for your science classroom, even when you’re studying space rather than Earth. Start by downloading Google Earth. It’s fast and free. Once it’s installed on your computer (fairly automatic — you might have to give permission, but otherwise it’ll install itself), just open… Continue reading
Logic is important, and can be hard to teach. I spend a lot of time with my writing students trying to get across to them the importance of logical reasoning, support for one’s claims, and providing evidence for things we say, but for many of them, it’s a new idea.… Continue reading
Sir Ken Robinson said, discussing creativity, “I don’t mean to say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. But if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” It is an inspiring speech. You can also read Sir Ken’s book, Out of Our… Continue reading
Two kids may seem to be very much alike, and yet be very different when it comes to learning style. One of the issues in differentiated instruction is teaching for different modalities, or sensory learning styles. Some people learn better through visual input, some through what they hear, and others… Continue reading
The Italian fairy tale “Snow White” is one of the best-known fairy tales, one of the most dramatic and exciting, and it is also one of the most violent and frightening, including as it does murder, cannibalism, and red-hot shoes. Our state standards mandate the use of folk and fairy tales… Continue reading
Not everyone approves of using pirates in the classroom, but you can’t deny that many students find them appealing and even exciting. There was a time when the line between pirate and explorer was fairly fine (Sir Francis Drake springs to mind), and there certainly is a long literary tradition… Continue reading
Teachers can tell when that kindergartener needs to be rushed into the bathroom, and we can also tell when that older student is texting under the table. There are some expressions you get to know. But in many classrooms across the country, cell phones are no longer confiscated. Instead,… Continue reading
Science heroes can come from any place or time, but since I’m posting this during Asian and Pacific American History Month, I’d like to start with China. One year, I taught English to a group of Chinese physics students. They taught me that science heroes were lauded in their… Continue reading
