Plants are a great topic for middle school.  I am always looking or ways to review the various groups of plants after each instruction unit.  Check out this 2 minute video doodle.  Its perfect to help your students review everything they have learned about this important kingdom of life.  If you need more resources, check out ourPlants for Middle School series. 

If you are using Canvas, rubrics are a great time saver.  The following tech tip explains how to reuse rubrics in Canvas to make grading more efficient. 

Recently I have been working on some Doodle Videos to help my students better understand plants.  This one is geared for middle school students learning the complex fern life cycle. If you are interested in the accompanying resources, please check out my Seedless Vascular Plant Lesson for Middle School

Many of us a making online resources for our students and printable packets for those that lack internet.  Here's a two tips to save you time and energy.
1.  Plan out your content first.  I like to create a presentation that lays out my lesson.  That way if I am teaching live, recording or sending a copy home, all kids are getting similar materials.
2.  Print to PDF is an easy way to take your presentations and turn them into packet forms that can be send home.  The following clip will explain how this work.

Stay well!

During this next month I am going to be hosting a series of short tips for teaching science online.  These short videos will provides quick and simple lesson I have learned overs the past decade as an online teacher and course designer. 

As we are dealing with creating learning experience for our students at home and online I wanted to take some time to post FREE online resources that can be used to help kids maintain their progress without teachers and parents spending hours at home.  

Passion is defined as a “strong feeling of enthusiasm or excitement for something or about doing something.” Teachers make lessons come alive when they are passionate.  What gets you going?  Consider incorporating it into your next class.  Be passionate, smile, have fun in the classroom.  Your students will remember you for it.

Found this great resource for making sour dough bread in science class. This project would be great for discussing cell energy, classification (fungi kingdom) or just a really cool science experiment. The graphic alone would be a great discussion point.  All from Januarys issue of NSTA Science Scope. #scistarter   #NSTA