Excellent resources for teaching tips, strategies, and lessons.

If you are looking for anything teacher-related, you are sure to find it at one of these sites!

I hope that you are already aware of these wonderful sites for teachers. They are not strictly science related. Rather, they offer a wide range of materials for all ages and all subject areas.

Are you looking for:

• Lesson Plans?
• Teaching strategies?
• Printables?
• New ideas for presenting basic skills?
• Fun activities?
• Creative educational crafts?

Whatever you might be looking for in your teaching or for your classroom, I feel confident that it can be found through one of these sites.

The Lesson Cloud

This blog is a collaborative blog written by almost 100 different educators.  The postings represent a great balance of subject areas and age levels.

Classroom Freebies

The header on this blog says it all.... "Top educators bringing you the best resources for your classroom every day and always free!"
It just can't get any better than "FREE"!  From this site you can download almost anything.  Again, the free materials cover all subject areas and all age groups.

Teaching Blog Central

This is your source for all teaching blogs, all day long which are divided up in to specific grade levels just for you!  You will find a different website that has a blog roll which includes blogs that are primarily geared toward that specific grade level, with a few collaborative blogs thrown in for good measure.  Now, you can see blogs and posts that are most relevant to you and they are all in one place!  This allows you to find the teaching blogs you need.  Looking for blogs written by high school teachers?  Simple click on "High School Herd".  There is a blog roll for each subject area.


I hope that you will take some time to look these over.  I guarantee it will be time well spent.

Happy Teaching!!

What Does This Have To Do With Biology?

We went to Disney World!

I have completed deserted my blog for over a week, but now I am back and am looking forward to a great year!  The day after Christmas our family went to Disney World for a week.  Yes, it was crazy crowded, but very magical.  The decorations were so pretty and festive.  We were in the Magic Kingdom on New Year's Eve, and I have never seen so many people in my entire life, but the New Year's Eve fireworks were out of this world!!

Now for a reality check.  School is starting back.  Time to grow up and be a responsible teacher/mom/wife again.  I have been racking my brain trying to think of something "biology related" to write about.  I have some ideas for new labs and activities for my classes this semester.  As I try them out on my students, I'll pass them along to you.

For now, I have some wonderful photos to share with you.  One of our days at Disney was spent at the Animal Kingdom Park.  We arrived at opening which was 7 am for the holiday crowds.  It was a cool morning, but very sunny.  We headed straight for the Kilimanjaro Safari ride. Because of the early time, and the coolness of the early morning, and because it was feeding time, we had some amazing encounters with the animals.  Here are some photos for you.

This giraffe walked right up to our truck
and practically stuck his head inside!

Beautiful ostrich!

The rhino was heading toward the feeding station
and walked within 10 feet of our bus.

Is there anything any cuter than a baby elephant??

I don't know why, but I just love flamingos. 

I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season and a very Happy New Year. Here's to a great 2012 with our families and our students. My blog has survived the first year, and I greatly appreciate the support from all of you.  

Happy Teaching!!

Excellent Resources for Teaching the Protists

Excellent Short Videos of Protists

Just as my school was getting out for the Christmas break, I was finishing up a unit on the Protists with my biology classes.  I am very fortunate to have the use of an extremely well equipped high school lab, but before I took my students to the lab to complete my protist lab, I wanted some short video clips to use in the classroom during my lecture.  Most sites that host video are blocked at my school, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find several sites that I could access and use in my classroom.

Here are a few of the sites that I found.  What I liked the best was the short length of each clip.  With each of these sites, I could show 20-30 seconds of one organism and then move on to another organism.

Each of the sites listed below are free and the quality of the video is excellent.

Nikon Microscopy:  This was my favorite site.  Not only did it have the clips of the protists I was looking for, but it also has video clips of annelids, cnidarians, crustaceans, etc.  I'll be going back and using this site again and again.

Fun Science Gallery:  This site has 38 movies of bacteria, protists and freshwater multicellular organisms.  This site gives a few short sentences on particular structures to watch for as the video plays.

Natural History Museum Microbiology Video Collection:  All I can say about this site is just "Wow!!"  If you can't find what you are looking for here, it probably doesn't exist!

After teaching the about the protists in my classroom, I took my students to the lab for my 3-day lab on the protists.  Having used the short video clips in the classroom made my lab run smooth and easy.  I have already written a blog post about this lab.
You can access it and read about it here:   The Living Protists Lab

Happy Holidays and Happy Teaching!

Scientific American "Citizen Science" - A Fantastic Resource

Turn your students into scientists!

Your students can actually help collect data for actual scientific research projects!

Hardly a day goes by that I don't check the Scientific American web site.  Not only does it have great news stories for me to share in my classroom, but it has a section called "Citizen Science" that is just a fantastic way for us science teachers to involve our students in actual, ongoing scientific research projects.  This explanation comes directly from the Citizen Science section of the web site:

Currently, there are two projects available that particularly interest me.  Both of these can be done with students at school, or can be done by children with their parents at home during the holidays.

This project is called "Christmas Bird Count".  "The National Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count(CBC) is an early-winter bird census, where thousands of citizen scientists across the US, Canada and many countries in the Western Hemisphere, go out over a 24 hour period to count birds.

Count volunteers follow specified routes through a designated 24-kilometer diameter circle, counting every bird they see or hear all day. All CBC’s are conducted in the period from December 14 to January 5 each season, and each count is conducted in one calendar day.
The data collected by observers over the past century allow researchers, conservation biologists and other interested individuals to study the long-term health and status of bird populations across North America. When combined with other surveys such as the Breeding Bird Survey, it provides a picture of how the continent's bird populations have changed in time and space over the past hundred years."

You have to sign up for this project through the link above to find out if this is being done in your area.  You will be assigned a specific route to follow.  

This project is called "The Whale Song Project - Whale FM".  

I particularly like this project because it can be done in the classroom or at home on your computer.

"Through the Whale Song Project, citizen scientists are presented with a whale call and shown where it was recorded on a map of the world’s oceans and seas. After listening to the whale call citizen scientists are asked to listen to a number of potential matching calls from the project’s database. If a match is found, the citizen scientist clicks on that sound’s spectrogram and the results are stored.
The dataset generated by this project should help scientists to answer a number of questions regarding whale communication."


There are new projects being added to Citizen Science all the time.  This is a fantastic opportunity for the students in our science classrooms to participate in current scientific research projects.

Happy Teaching!!

P.S.  I am adding this little tidbit of information.  After my blog post was published, I was made aware of this site:  SciStarter.  It has a wealth of information on projects that you can join.

Celebration and Freebies!

Over 500 Facebook Followers!

Over 500 Twitter Followers!

It's Time for a celebration and some giveaways!!

Thank you so so so much to all of my followers.  What a great year I have had!  I am excited that for some time now I have had over 500 twitter followers, and just yesterday I soared past 500 facebook followers.  (If you are not yet a follower and would like to be, click the links in the right side bar.)

In appreciation I would like to offer a couple of freebies to you.  The two items listed below are normally for sale in my TpT store, but for the next 48 hours I will have them listed as free.

The two products are called:  "Let's Build a Cladogram!"  and "Measurement Madness!"  Here are the links to the two products:

Click picture to download product.

Click this picture to download product.

At the end of 48 hours, these two products will return to being "for sale" products, so grab them while you can!  Clicking on the links above will take you to my TeachersPayTeachers.com store.  There the products can be downloaded for free.  While you are there, go ahead and download all of the 14 products I have listed that are always for free.  A list of these products can be found in the left hand sidebar of my blog.  If you feel compelled to become a follower of my TpT store, I would appreciate that also!  Science Stuff Store on TpT

You will need to sign up for an account on TpT to complete the downloads, but there is certainly no obligation to buy anything.  In fact, TpT has over 16,000 FREE items.  You can literally find tons and tons of materials for any subject and any grade level for FREE on TpT.

Many, many thanks for your support during this year.  I hope you and your families have a wonderful holiday season!

The Living Protists Lab

Click here to view product.

The microscopic world is fascinating to students. Students of all ages love to look at living organisms under the microscope. 


I just spent the last three days in the lab with my biology students observing a variety of living protists.  I use this lab for both my standard Biology I students as well as my AP Biology students.  No matter what the age or the ability level, kids love this lab!  


This lab provides an extensive look at many different species of living algae and protozoa. 


To complete this lab as written, you will need to order the following protist cultures from a biological supply company. 
1) Spirogyra
2) Algae Survey Mixture (Contains 6 representative algae)
3) Diatom Mixture
4) Protozoa Survey Set (Contains 6 representatives: Ameba, Euglena, Paramecium, Spirostomum, Stentor, and Volvox)
5) Marine Dinoflagellates
6) Preying Protozoa Set


This lab was written with a high school biology class in mind, but it is so easily adaptable to younger ages.  This is one of those labs that just gets kids excited about science.  I have not had a student yet who did not enjoy watching these amazing organisms under a microscope.  Even students who have shown no previous interest in your class will perk up during this lab.  

Happy Teaching!

Teach Classification and Make It Fun!!

What is this organism?  

What characteristics does it have?  To what other organisms is it similar?  Is it a vertebrate or an invertebrate?  What does it eat?  What role does it play in an ecosystem?

All biology teachers have particular topics that they really don't like to teach, and topics that we LOVE LOVE to teach.  Teaching classification is a topic that I LOVE!


Classification involves problem solving and critical thinking.  Basically a taxonomist is a "living organism detective".

I have two really fun activities that my students always enjoy.  The first is called "Let's Learn to Use and Build a Dichotomous Key".    This product teaches students all about dichotomous classification keys.  Students will learn why classification is necessary, the definition of a dichotomous key, and how to use a dichotomous key.  Students will analyze the included pictures of 7 different cone-bearing plants, using the included dichotomous key to classify them.   

Finally students will learn to construct a classification key of their own.  Students are given pictures of 12 different primates and asked to make their own classification key.  There are also 10 follow up questions for students to answer.

The second activity that I love to do with my students is called "Let's Build A Cladogram".  Cladistics is one of the newest trends in the modern classification of organisms.  It shows the relationship between different organisms based on the presence or absence of characteristics called derived characters.  In this activity, students will look at pictures  of 7 different animals to determine if they possess certain derived characters.  This data will then be used to build a cladogram.

There are just so many fun things to do when teaching classification.  I always have to make myself wrap up the unit and move on to a new topic!