Here’s a confession – I get bored easily. Teaching the same content 5 times a day (for 37 years) is boring. So I shake it up a little by adding movement into my middle school science lessons. It gives me entertainment, engages the kids, and gives us all a little brain break.
Why incorporate movement?
If you need convincing that allowing your 11-14 year olds time to get up and move is good for you and good for them, here are my top 5reasons:
Movement boosts engagement by breaking up the monotony of seated learning and helps keep students more focused and involved.
Movement enhances retention. Physical activity improves circulation which strengthens neural connections and makes it easier for kids to focus and remember concepts.
Movement supports different learning styles. Kinesthetic learners have a very difficult time with seated learner. It’s important to include them in your lesson planning too.
Movement improves classroom behavior. Students are less likely to become restless and distracted and therefore less likely to become disruptive.
Movement makes learning more fun! When students associate science class with enjoyable activities, they’re more likely to stay curious and engaged.
5 Movement Based Activities
Here are some movement based activities you can try this week!
Charades. Have students act out vocabulary terms for a quick brain break.
4 Corners. Label each of the corners of your classroom with the letters A through D and then ask a multiple choice question, asking students to move to the correct corner.
Walk and Talk. Instead of think-pair-share, having student pair up and walk around the room explaining a concept to each other.
Stations. Set up different stations around the room for students to explore concepts with hands on activities, mini-experiments, or review questions.
Gallery Walks. Introduce or reinforce a concept with photographs around the room such as graphs of climate change data or images of water pollution.
Learning science is a lot like learning a new language. The vocab can really bog a middle schooler down – even if they grasp the concept of Punnett squares, for example, words like homozygous and allele make success unachievable. Middle schoolers need engaging, interactive ways to reinforce new terms so they truly stick.
In this post, I’ll share quick, low-prep strategies that will get your students using and remembering key science terms without even realizing they’re studying. Whether you have five minutes before the bell rings or need a brain break activity, these ideas will help students build confidence with vocabulary in a way that feels more like play than work.
Create Anchor Charts or Word Walls. A brightly colored and illustrated word wall or anchor chart catches students eyes and reinforces vocab without students even realizing they’re learning. Bonus points if your students create them.
Concept Maps: Give students an opportunity to create their own visual diagram relating the terms in the unit.
Frayer Model: Use a template to have students define, draw a picture, and use each term in a sentence.
Comic Strips or Memes: Illustrate terms with images to help you remember them.
Mnemonics: We all know “My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nachos.” Have students create mnemonics for lists like metric prefixes or characteristics of minerals.
Self Checking Worksheets: Students build grit when they have the option for practice with feedback.
Escape Rooms: Students need to find clues and solve puzzles to “break out.” They won’t even realize they’re practicing their vocab.
Color by number worksheets offer practice and a little brain break while you’re at it. Try one for free by clicking here.
Play a Game:
Charades – write vocab on index cards and have students work in pairs to act out terms for their classmates to guess.
Pictionary – Let teams draw vocab terms on the white board for their partners to guess.
Matching – write vocab term on index cards and write definitions on separate cards. After students match the terms, let them check each other’s work for additional reinforcement.
I’ve implemented interactive notebooks in my middle school science classroom for a few years and, while I’m not an expert, I do have 17 tips and tricks I’ve learned that I thought I’d share with you.
What are Interactive Notebooks?
Interactive notebooks (INBs) are a hybrid between a notebook and a scrapbook. Students use them to take notes, draw diagrams, create graphs, and paste in photos or other visuals to help them better understand the material. INBs are fantastic tools for teaching and learning in the classroom.
Benefits of Interactive Notebooks
They allow students to organize their notes and class materials in a creative and interactive way, making the learning process more engaging and enjoyable.
INBs offer a way for students to personalize what they’re learning. Being creative and expressing themselves by using color to decorate their notebook helps students learn actively.
They help students stay organized. Gone are the torn up folders with papers stuffed inside.
Best practices for Interactive Notebooks in Middle School
Let me spare you some of the lessons I had to learn the hard way. Here are some tips and tricks I’ve picked up that make using INBs a lot easier:
Use a composition notebook. Papers get lost and jumbled too easily in a loose leaf binder. An old fashioned composition notebook keeps everything exactly where you want it.
Let students design their cover. I use stickers as incentives and rewards, and they are often used as decoration on INBs.
Be sure students write their names on the covers of the notebook. I also like to have students write their name on the top edge – it makes it easier to keep track when I’m grading.
I have students go through the entire notebook and number each page in the top corner. Then, page 1 becomes the table of contents (I use a template). As new topics get added to their notebook, students should update the table of contents with the topic name and page number to make it easier to navigate.
If you’re going to collect and grade notebooks, have students glue the notebook rubric into the inside front cover of their INB. When I’m grading notebooks, I print new copies of the rubric and staple them into the next blank page of each notebook as I grade it.
Use glue sticks. Liquid glue was an unmitigated disaster (There was glue spilled every single day and students poured it onto their hands to watch it dry. Never again.) If students provide their own glue sticks, you can buy a case or two and give them as rewards for winning games. If you want to provide glue sticks for the class, buy the cheapest ones you can find because you’re going to go through a LOT.
Show your students how to use glue! Have them use the glue stick to draw a square on the back of the paper they want to glue into their notebooks. If you’re feeling ambitious, have them draw an X in the middle of the square. Then they press the paper into their notebook.
Use lots of color. I keep a caddy of colored pencils on each lab desk and assign a student the job of sharpening.
Create your own INB along with the students as a model. Create a DIGITAL INB (I used Canva) so that students can keep up when they’re home sick.
Find a storage location in your classroom and only allow notebooks to go home for test preparation. I used bins for each class period, but a space on a book shelf is fine too.
Minimize cutting. The range of graphomotor skills in middle school surprised me, and there are some students who will need significantly longer than others to cut things out. I do as much cutting as possible and assign an aide the job when I can.
Use foldables, tabs, flaps, and pockets that can be glued into notebooks for increased interactivity and engagement.
Include graphic organizers, graphs, charts, mind maps, and Venn diagrams as often as possible to help students visualize concepts.
Add QR codes that link to videos, simulations, or additional resources.
Allow students some choice in how they organize and decorate their notebooks to foster ownership.
Gradually increase the complexity of tasks in the notebook as students become more comfortable with the format.
Encourage students to share their notebooks with parents to involve them in the learning process. (I asked parents to use the rubric to score their student’s INB.)
Are your students ready to compete in March Mammal Madness?! Mine sure are – their older siblings have told them how much fun they’ll have and now they’re really excited to start!
What is March Mammal Madness?
March Mammal Madness (MMM), whose logo is “If you’re learning, you’re winning,” is a bracket-style competition modeled by Dr. Katie Hinde of Arizona State University after the NCAA basketball tournament. In this activity, students research 64 different species. Then Dr. Hinde and her team separate the 64 animals into four divisions and assign them seeds. The tournament begins in March with simulated “battles” that asks students to predict which of the two animals would win in a real life situation.
The simulated battles in MMM are based on the characteristics of the competing species. These battles are determined by some combination of:
Overall survival strategy.
Hunting and feeding habits;
Reproductive strategies;
Adaptation to different environments;
Behavioral characteristics such as social behavior or communication methods.
Throughout the month of March, battles are live-tweeted (#2025MMM) and video recaps are produced 2-3 times per week. Students follow along on their brackets and earn points for each battle they correctly participated. We keep an advancing bracket in the back of our classroom and it becomes quite the subject of discussion.
Benefits of participating in March Mammal Madness
These battles in MMM are meant to be a fun and engaging way to teach students about different mammal species and the characteristics that make them unique. It also helps students develop critical thinking skills, teamwork, and collaboration among students.
The MMM activity is not just a fun and engaging way to teach students about different mammal species, but also helps students develop critical thinking skills. By having to consider multiple factors and make decisions based on evidence, students are forced to think critically about the information they are presented with.
Additionally, the activity helps to promote teamwork and collaboration among students. Often, students will work in small groups to research and make decisions about which species to advance. This allows students to share their knowledge and learn from one another, which can be especially helpful for students who may be struggling with the material.
One year, my kids love MMM so much that they created their own May Mammal Madness. They designed their own brackets, wrote the battles, and even made video recaps of each battle.
I kicked off this year’s MMM tournament with a rousing game of animal kingdom trivia. Kids were so excited, and they are ready for the battles to begin!
If you’d like to play trivia with your students, click here to download my game! Just be sure to comment below and let me know what you thought!
Really nasty flu this year, not to mention noro virus and COVID. And the sun sets so early and it’s been cold and you might want a day just to relax. Everyone needs a day off now and then. But it’s so HARD to plan for an absence, and SO HARD to come up with meaningful, low prep activities your students can do without you. That’s why most of us just go in to work sick – it’s easier to go to work than it is to craft meaningful lessons that will occupy and entertain your students for a whole class period.
I’ve collected a few sub plans I can leave at any time of year – regardless of where I am in the curriculum or if 2 classes are dropping because of an assembly. I’ve found that a great sub plan is an enrichment activity that incorporates informational text into scientific literacy. Not only does it address NGSS skills, it also addresses Common Core skills. When you’re done reading this blog post, you’ll have a dozen great ideas to use for easy peasy sub plans that will save you a ton of time and effort, and keep your students learning science even when you’re not there!
Here are some of my favorite sub plans for days when I just can’t (or don’t want to) go in:
Happy Darwin Day! Darwin Day is an annual celebration that honors the life and scientific contributions of Charles Darwin, the renowned naturalist best known for his groundbreaking work on the theory of evolution through natural selection. Held on February 12, Darwin’s birthday, this day serves as a global tribute to the profound impact his ideas have had on our understanding of biology, ecology, and the interconnectedness of life on Earth. Here are some ideas to help you celebrate Darwin Day in your middle school science classroom!
What is Darwin Day?
The purpose of Darwin Day goes beyond commemorating Darwin’s achievements; it also seeks to promote science, critical thinking, and intellectual curiosity.
Events associated with Darwin Day often include educational lectures, museum exhibits, film screenings, and community discussions about evolution, biodiversity, and the scientific method. These activities provide opportunities for individuals of all ages to engage with scientific ideas and celebrate the importance of evidence-based reasoning in addressing global challenges such as conservation and climate change.
By fostering a sense of wonder and respect for the diversity of life, Darwin Day encourages us to continue exploring the mysteries of nature and applying scientific insights to create a better future for all.
Celebrating Darwin Day in your middle school classroom
Here are some ideas you can use to bring Charles Darwin to life in your science class:
Evolution Timeline: Have students create a visual timeline of Darwin’s life and major milestones in evolutionary theory.
Play a game. Simulate natural selection with students acting as species adapting to different island environments. Through competition, have students discover how survival of the fittest works.
Natural Selection Simulation: Use colored paper and a background to mimic predator-prey dynamics (e.g., students act as predators picking off poorly camouflaged “prey”).
Take a virtual field trip to the Galapagos. Use virtual tours and web cams to simulate Darwin’s voyage and learn about Darwin’s discoveries.
Tree of Life Art Project: Create a large tree diagram showing the relationships between various species. Build a family tree showing human evolution.
Darwin’s Diary: Have students write diary entries from Darwin’s perspective during his voyage on the HMS Beagle.
Bird Beak Experiment: Simulate bird beak adaptations with tools (e.g., tweezers, spoons) and different “food” types (beans, rubber bands, etc.).
DNA Connections: Teach about shared genetics among species and have students explore DNA similarities using an online tool or visuals.
Examine case studies of observed natural selection. Learn about the evolution of the Peppered Moth.
Evolutionary Art: Challenge students to design a fictional organism adapted to a specific environment.
Study Mutations. Learn how mutations occur and drive natural selection in a stations activity.
Nature Walk: Explore local habitats and discuss how organisms are adapted to their environments.
Examine adaptations of various animals such as camouflage, hibernation, and self defense.
Science Comics: Let students create a comic strip explaining Darwin’s discoveries or an evolutionary concept in a fun way.
Grit—the perseverance and passion to achieve long-term goals—is a critical skill that helps students succeed, both in school and in life. But if you’ve been teaching for a while, you may have noticed that students today seem to give up more easily when things get tough. Building resilience in the classroom might be the ultimate teacher flex.
Recently, my students were working on a challenging project. They had to create scale model of geologic history by converting an existing model to a custom size. The moment students hit a roadblock— they got frustrated without a “correct” answer or they mistook billions for millions of years and had to start over again—they wanted to quit. Instead of puzzling through their challenges, students asked me for answers and, when it was clear they weren’t getting answers from me, they just quit. It became clear that many students don’t believe they are capable of solving complicated problems, and, instead of pushing through, they opt for an easier path. Moments like these highlight why teaching grit matters so much. Middle school is full of challenges, and by helping students develop grit, we can set them up to tackle obstacles with resilience and confidence.
Students don’t get that sense of accomplishment when they don’t accomplish anything. Grit is more than just a classroom skill—it’s a life skill that helps students achieve success well beyond their school years. Whether it’s pursuing a dream career, mastering a new skill, or navigating personal challenges, grit is what keeps people going when the path gets tough. It teaches perseverance, the ability to stay focused on long-term goals despite setbacks, and resilience, the strength to bounce back after failure. By helping students develop grit now, we’re equipping them with the mindset and habits they’ll need to overcome obstacles and thrive in the real world. But how do middle school teachers help students develop grit?
Practical Strategies for Teachers
If you’re interested in building resilience in the classroom, these strategies may help you.
Model Grit in Your Own Behavior – One way that teachers can help students develop their own grit is to model it in ourselves. Share your struggles and how you overcome them. Talk about times you faced challenges, such as struggling to learn a skill or manage a difficult situation, and how you worked through them. If something doesn’t go as planned in the classroom (e.g., technology issues or an activity not working as expected), demonstrate calm problem-solving and a “let’s figure it out” attitude.
Embrace Mistakes as Learning Opportunities – When you point out a student’s mistake, focus on how to use the mistake to improve rather than focusing on how the mistake makes them not quite as good as they should be. Talk openly about your own mistakes and how you’re using them to improve. This normalizes failure as part of the process.
Celebrate persistence in your classroom culture. Some teachers use the “ask three before me” method of classroom management, and it’s a great way to remind students that they have the power within them to solve their own problems. Identify and praise times you catch students persisting, whether it’s something simple like missing a pencil or something more rigorous like completing an assignment.
Set High Expectations and Provide Support. One of the highest compliments I’ve ever received was from a student who, after he graduated, came back and told me how much he appreciated the high bar that I had set for him. “You didn’t just make science difficult,” he told me. “You gave us the tools and support to help us learn it.”
Teach Growth Mindset. Use language that reinforces effort over talent. “Nice try” is better than “Not exactly what I was looking for.” Introduce activities to help students reframe setbacks as learning opportunities. “How are you going to try differently next time?”
Project based learning may offer some support for students to practice grit. By assigning tasks that require problem solving and long term commitment, students practice using the muscles necessary for sustained effort.
Challenge-Based Tasks such as puzzles, brainteasers, or STEM challenges where the answer isn’t immediately obvious, encouraging persistence and creativity. Try escape rooms for students to practice content and well as persistence skills.
Collaborative Group Work involving group tasks where students must rely on teamwork to overcome challenges helps students to build both social and academic resilience.
By building resilience in the classroom, middle school science teachers are helping their students become more functional adults.
Teaching is hard, even with all of the materials provided to you. Even the best text book or canned curriculum needs filling out – bellringers, review activities, practice worksheets, assessments, cloze notes. In hindsight, I wish I had spent those Saturday mornings when I was a new(er) teacher with my kids, watching cartoons or playing soccer. But instead I was at my computer every Saturday, clicking away at an endless to-do list. I spent SO much time creating resources.
I hope you are building pillow forts or pulling wagons with your kids every chance you get. And to help you out, I’m sending some of the earth science resources I created to you. I hope that these resources make your days a little easier and give you more time doing the things that matter to you. I also hope your students get engaged and curious and even learn a little science!
So go ahead. Click whichever ones you want – take them all if they’ll help you!
In my middle school classes, I have a range of abilities from 4th grade through 11th. On top of that, I have fast workers and slow workers – some students are done with an assignment in 5 minutes and others are done in 55. My middle schoolers also have a wide range of interests – some love sports, music, video games, animals, you name it. Add a few English language learners to the mix and you can see my melting pot of scientists. It’s a constant battle to offer appropriately challenging activities to everyone in my class – most activities are geared for on-grade-level students so I have to modify up and down to meet everyone’s needs. Adding an “End Zone” to my classroom solved a few problems but not everything. Differentiation in middle school science is a delicate equilibrium. Differentiation is the practice of tailoring instruction to meet the individual needs of each student. In practice, it’s simply providing a variety of learning experiences and activities to help students reach their full potential. Differentiated instruction ensures that all students have access to the same material and can apply it to their own lives. It also encourages students to be creative and think outside of the box.
Differentiation ideas in middle school
Tiers
One way to differentiate instruction is through the use of tiered assignments. This approach involves creating different versions of an assignment that are tailored to the varying levels of student understanding. For example, a teacher might provide a basic version of an assignment for struggling students, a more advanced version for gifted students, and a middle version for the majority of the class. This allows students to work at their own level, while still covering the same essential content. In a scaffolded assignment, students at different readiness levels receive different assignments. The assignments may differ in expectations and rubric, or they may differ in the amount of guidance or hints provided. Scaffolding is tricky – students become aware that their assignment is “different” and sometimes that leads to discomfort.
Flexible Grouping
Another strategy is to use flexible grouping. This involves grouping students based on their strengths, needs, and interests, rather than their ability levels. For example, a teacher might group students who are interested in engineering together, while another group of students who are interested in biology would be placed together. This allows students to work with their peers who share their interests and passions, which can increase motivation and engagement. Heterogeneous Grouping – Assignments can be differentiated by skill level or by interest simply by putting students into groups. Pairing a higher level student with a lower level student helps them both, although in different ways. Pairing a student who is very good at writing with a student who is strong in math helps them both. Forming heterogeneous groups according to interest provides the opportunity for everyone to learn. Homogeneous Grouping – In some situations, it makes sense to put the strong students together or to put all of the students who are good at art together. This especially works when assignments offer students choice – the good writers will create something written and the good artists will create something visual. It also works well when scaffolding – you can adjust the expectations and the amount of guidance according to the group dynamics.
Technology
Another way to differentiate instruction is through the use of technology. Many middle school science teachers use interactive simulations and videos to engage students in the learning process. For example, a teacher might use a virtual lab to demonstrate a scientific concept, or a video to introduce a new topic. These tools can be used to provide students with different levels of support, depending on their needs. For example, students who are struggling with a concept can use an interactive simulation to practice the concept, while students who are more advanced can use the video to explore the topic in more depth. There are many websites that allow for differentiated instruction and assessment. Here’s a link to a pretty well curated selection.
Formative Assessment
Another strategy is to use formative assessment. Formative assessment allows teachers to assess student understanding and progress in real-time, which allows them to adjust instruction accordingly. For example, a teacher might use a formative assessment to assess student understanding of a new concept, and then use that information to provide additional support or extension activities. This allows teachers to continually assess student understanding and make adjustments as needed.
Mini-Lessons
It’s not unusual to hear me say in my classroom “Everyone who got #3 wrong, join me at the table in the back,” or “I’m reteaching this concept in 5 minutes if you want to join me.” No judgement, just an opportunity to re-teach a skill to particular students who need it. This works best during an activity in which students are determining their own pace.
Student Choice
A great way to differentiate instruction in an earth science unit is to provide a variety of resources and activities that are tailored to each student’s learning style. For example, an auditory learner might benefit from listening to podcasts or videos about the unit’s material, while a visual learner might benefit from diagrams and visual aids. A choice board is usually a 9 box grid with 9 different activities, all that teach or measure the same skill but approach it with a different modality. For example, a choice board may include a creative writing task, an expository writing task, a video task, a Q&A task, a creative arts task, a research task, and possibly even a musical or food-related task. Choice boards are great when assessing knowledge is more important than skills. For example, you want students to tell you the important characteristics of the desert rather than demonstrate that they can use a topic sentence correctly.
It’s also important to provide a variety of activities and resources that allow students to explore the material in new ways. For example, a student might be asked to complete a research project or create a poster or model that explains a certain concept. This allows the student to dig deeper into the material and get an even better understanding of the earth science unit.
Self Paced Instruction
Allowing students to work at their own pace helps build responsibility and work ethic. At the beginning of a practice session, provide students with a checklist or flow chart of what they need to do. A simple example: “Complete questions #1-5 then check your work. If you get 100%, move on to questions 6-10. If you get any questions wrong, come see me.” Stations or Task Cards -Stations can combine many of the above techniques. In a station activity, students rotate between different physical locations in the classroom. Perhaps at one station they watch a video, then the read an article, then they complete a worksheet, then they do a hands on experiment, then they listen to a mini lesson from you. The best station activities are ones that allow students to rotate through the stations in any order, allowing you to group students and scaffold according to need. Flash Cards -Quizlet, Quizziz, and Boom cards are great ways that students can use to practice skills or content at their own pace.
Varying Modalities
Deliver instruction using varying modalities. Use lots of visuals, videos, and graphics but also use music and opportunities for students to draw or act. If you don’t want to use a choice board to let them choose their own modality, then switch up the modality you’re using so that every student has a chance to be most comfortable with your teaching style. Use your Room. The physical arrangement and decorations/displays in your classroom can help every child access knowledge. Arrange desks and place students in the place that works best for them. Use anchor charts and displays that appeal to different learning styles.
There is no limit to the amount of ways you can use a breakout or a virtual escape room in your classroom. I’ve used them to introduce new content, as review lessons, as day-before-a-break-and-I-don’t-want-to-start-something-new, getting to know you activities, and end of year activities. They’re great in person with locked boxes and puzzles, and they’re also great virtually with a completely digital product.
Flipped Classroom
Flipped learning is a method of instruction that assigns students the activity of viewing a lecture or copying notes at home and then practicing with the teacher in the classroom. In a flipped classroom, the active learning takes place in school and the passive learning takes place at home. Students are exposed to new material on their own and have the opportunity to ask question, review concepts, and practice skills with their teacher the next day.
Assessment
When it comes to assessment, it’s important to remember that differentiated instruction is about more than just providing different levels of tests. Differentiated assessment can involve providing students with a variety of different ways to show their understanding of the material, such as creating a project, writing a paper, or creating a presentation. This allows students to demonstrate their knowledge in a way that is more meaningful to them.
Differentiating instruction in middle school science can be a challenging task, as it requires teachers to take into account the diverse needs and abilities of their students. Differentiating instruction in middle school science requires teachers to take into account the diverse needs and abilities of their students. By using a variety of strategies, such as tiered assignments, flexible grouping, technology, and formative assessment, teachers can create an inclusive and effective learning environment for all students. These strategies allow students to work at their own level, while still covering the same essential content, and help to increase motivation and engagement in the learning process. However, by using a variety of strategies, teachers can create an inclusive and effective learning environment for all students.
Welcome to winter! Whether you’re (like me) already on your third snowfall of the season or (like our southern friends) finally breaking out the sweaters, the hygge lifestyle takes over all of us this time of year.
Some ways to bring the cozy into your classroom include updating your classroom decor – I added a few hundred student-made snowflakes to the back of my room before the winter break. Softer lighting and more comfortable seating options are another way that some teachers are embracing the season. My niece is particularly thrilled with her teacher’s hot cocoa reward incentive, and my own students loved the fifteen minute winter nature walk we took looking for signs of animal or plant life on the campus.
Embracing the cozy with your students can be as simple as using seasonal resources without sacrificing content. Try these new winter themed resources for your middle school classroom and see if your students are more engaged!
