Science Month by Month: Practical Ideas and Activities for Teachers and Homeschoolers - Softcover

Spencer, Julia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0471729019 ISBN 13: 9780471729013

Verlag: Jossey-Bass, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

If you want your students to think scientifically and have fun while they are doing it, Science Month by Month is the book for you. This collection of lessons, activities, calendars of historic science events, vocabulary word lists, and reproducible worksheets will help you develop seasonal science-theme units for your classrooms. The more than 80 activities are designed for flexibility and can be used in any sequence, any time during the school year. The activities are interdisciplinary, cover all areas of the science curriculum, complement other science programs and textbooks, and are easy to implement without special equipment or materials.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Julia Farish Spencer, Ph.D., has taught science in grades 3 though 8 in Knoxville, Tennessee and West Hartford, Connecticut, public school systems. Spencer is the president of Literary Workshops and Publications, a publisher and certified Connecticut CEU provider of seminars and workshops for educators. She was an adjunct professor at the University of Connecticut in Hartford.

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Science Month by Month offers dynamic science activities for every month of the school year. This hands-on resource contains everything an elementary or middle school science teacher needs to make their classes more timely and engaging.

If you want your students to think scientifically and have fun while they are doing it, Science Month by Month is the book for you. This collection of lessons, activities, calendars of historic science events, vocabulary word lists, and reproducible worksheets will help you develop seasonal science-theme units for your classrooms. The more than 80 activities are designed for flexibility and can be used in any sequence, any time during the school year. The activities are interdisciplinary, cover all areas of the science curriculum, complement other science programs and textbooks, and are easy to implement without special equipment or materials.

Science Month by Month includes

• A blank monthly calendar that can be enlarged and posted on the bulletin board, used for teacher's lesson planning, or handed out for students to fill in.
• A list of dates to remember and background information for the activities. This list of calendar events highlights science-related historic events or landmarks and also includes basic background information for the activities.
• Reproducible activity sheets that are correlated to many of the calendar dates.
• Five weekly calendar sheets that are found at the end of each section. They can be reproduced and handed out to students, or teachers can use them to write lesson plan notes.
• Six appendixes covering information for ordering supplementary videos, DVDs, and software; a science almanac trivia game; and reproducible charts and forms for tracking student progress, preparing science mini-reports, and awarding students with science certificates.

Filled with more than 200 illustrations and references to fun, new Web sites, Science Month by Month is a one-stop science resource for activities to do in school, after school, and in home schooling.

If you want your students to think scientifically and have fun while they are doing it, Science Month by Month is the book for you. This collection of lessons, activities, calendars of historic science events, vocabulary word lists, and reproducible worksheets will help you develop seasonal science-theme units for your classrooms. The more than 80 activities are designed for flexibility and can be used in any sequence, any time during the school year. The activities are interdisciplinary, cover all areas of the science curriculum, complement other science programs and textbooks, and are easy to implement without special equipment or materials.

Science Month by Month includes

• A blank monthly calendar that can be enlarged and posted on the bulletin board, used for teacher's lesson planning, or handed out for students to fill in.
• A list of dates to remember and background information for the activities. This list of calendar events highlights science-related historic events or landmarks and also includes basic background information for the activities.
• Reproducible activity sheets that are correlated to many of the calendar dates.
• Five weekly calendar sheets that are found at the end of each section. They can be reproduced and handed out to students, or teachers can use them to write lesson plan notes.
• Six appendixes covering information for ordering supplementary videos, DVDs, and software; a science almanac trivia game; and reproducible charts and forms for tracking student progress, preparing science mini-reports, and awarding students with science certificates.

Filled with more than 200 illustrations and references to fun, new Web sites, Science Month by Month is a one-stop science resource for activities to do in school, after school, and in home schooling.

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Science Month by Month, Grades 3 - 8

Practical Ideas and Activities for Teachers and HomeschoolersBy Julia Farish Spencer

Jossey-Bass

Copyright © 2006 Julia Farish Spencer
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-471-72901-3

Chapter One

September

September starts off with an annotated list of several important dates followed by activity sheets for many of the entries. You may want to recognize a particular event that occurred without doing an investigation or activity sheet. You may also want your students to read about an event and report to the class what they found out through their own research.

The information that follows is a brief overview to help you and your students with background information. You will want to consult other resources, including your science texts, for more specific information.

Some September Dates to Remember and Background Information for the Activities

Activity sheets are provided for starred dates only. It is your decision whether to give the students facts on each entry. And for the trivia game referred to, go to Appendix 5.

3* Viking 2 landed on Mars (1976). Viking 2 found proof of a past watery environment on Mars. Introduce your students to the fascinating facts about this planet-its canyons, channels, lava plains, and different seasons. See Activity Sheet 1.1.

A day on Mars is 24.5 hours in Earth time; a year is 687 days. Called the "red planet," Mars rotates on an axis similar to Earth's. Through space exploration, like the Mars Global Surveyor, Pathfinder, and Mars Odyssey, we have learned much about this neighboring planet. This is a great time to encourage your students to think scientifically. Have them read and find out about Mars and imagine what the planet is like, especially its seasons. Activity Sheet 1.1 encourages students to think about Earth and its seasons, as well as what seasons might be like on another planet.

4 Power Day in New York. On this day in 1882, Thomas Edison and his electric power company officially opened its first electric power station on Pearl Street in Manhattan, making New York the first city to have citywide electricity.

9* California Admission Day. The state of California was admitted to the Union on this date in 1850. This is an opportunity to recognize California as one of our largest states, in both area and population. California leads the United States in agricultural production, growing many important food products such as the avocado.

Avocados were first planted in California in the mid-1800s. They are an important crop and are very nutritious. Activity Sheet 1.2 will help students learn firsthand about growing plants from seeds, transplanting plants, and recording their observations systematically. Have students learn about California's geography and products by visiting the home page Web site: www.ca.gov/state/portal/myca_home page.jsp. (This is the first of several states students will encounter in this book.)

9 Birthday of Luigi Galvani (1737). Galvani was an Italian physicist and physician. He realized that animal muscle tissue had electricity as he observed and experimented with frogs' legs. His research influenced his contemporaries, such as Alessandro Volta, who created the first battery (the "voltaic pile"). The galvanometer, an instrument used to detect or measure a small electric current, was named in honor of Galvani. Volta proved that Galvani's theory was incorrect. He showed the frog's tissue was carrying an electric current between two metals.

10* Elias Howe received a patent for the sewing machine (1846). Where would we be without this important invention? This is a perfect time to introduce your students to the importance of science in the development of machines and other inventions.

Each year, thousands of people apply for and receive patents for their inventions. Introduce the students to the World Almanac, which lists the patents awarded each year.

Help students understand that a patent is an award-a grant and license given to someone for the exclusive use, sale, and distribution of his or her claimed invention. It is a legal protection. More than ninety thousand patents are distributed each year. Visit the U.S. Patent Web site at www.uspto.gov for information on patents. Let your students create an invention and describe it on Activity Sheet 1.3.

11 First operation of hydroelectric generator at Hoover Dam. In 1936, Hoover Dam sent power over 300 miles from the Colorado River in Nevada to Los Angeles, California. The dam stands 726 feet high and is 1,233 feet long. Encourage your students to find a picture of Hoover Dam in library books.

13* Birthday of Walter Reed (1851). This American pathologist is best remembered for his work in Cuba, where he helped identify the cause of yellow fever. Reed and his associates found that a mosquito was the carrier of this deadly disease, which infected many people.

This is an opportunity to find out about the anatomy of a mosquito and how it actually "bites" a person or an animal. Being aware of the feeding patterns of mosquitoes and ways to prevent getting bitten by them (they seldom feed in the middle of the day) is education for all. (See Activity Sheet 1.4.) Also, discuss any current events regarding mosquitoes and their nature, available through your newspapers, if appropriate, or Web sites. Updates on the West Nile virus can be found on the California state Web site: www.ca.gov/state/portal/myca_homepage.jsp.

13* World's highest recorded temperature (Africa, 1922). This is a good time to talk about seasonal differences around the world and temperature ranges (recording high and low temperatures). You may want to record your area's temperatures for a week and compare them to a previous year's statistics for the same dates.

Activity Sheet 1.5 helps students compute a mathematical average. It also helps them record important weather statistics. (September's trivia game in Appendix 5 reveals the recorded high temperature.)

14 Birthday of Ivan Pavlov (1849). This famous Russian received a Nobel Prize for his study of the physiology of animals and the structure of the brain and its relationship to nerves and muscles. (See the December entry and teacher information on the Nobel Prize.) He trained a dog to salivate on command, using a bell to teach the dog to associate food with a sound. Pavlov left a valuable legacy for science research. Many future scientists built on his findings in animal behavior and learning.

15* Birthday of Frank Eugene Lutz (1879). This famous American entomologist, educator, and museum curator was the first curator of the Department of Entomology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He established America's first guided nature trail in Harriman State Park, New York. As a young man, he was fascinated with insects and the process of metamorphosis, and he created insect dioramas.

In honor of Lutz, have students complete the chart on insect communication in Activity Sheet 1.6.

You may want them to work in small groups on completing the chart, and they could make a poster on insect communication and hang the posters in the classroom. You may also want to temporarily bring some insects into the classroom using bug cages, but only if the students have researched and safely caught the insect and plan to return it to its natural...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Jossey-Bass
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0471729019
• ISBN 13: 9780471729013
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 364
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Wiley-VCH GmbH; product_safety@wiley.com; ; Boschstrasse 12; Weinheim; 69469; Deutschland