Yetiman

The day before holiday break....40 minute classes....everyone sugared up.  I needed something fun that did not involved watching a movie....

Please meet YETI-MAN.

Student Challenge: Please don't let Yeti-Man die.  He and his tribe are being relocated to an island in the tropics.  He needs a device that keeps him from actually touching the water.  You must use a minimum of 3 supplies to attach to Yeti-Man and he must be able to float without the saltwater touching him.  He must be able to breathe and we need to be able to see his face.

1. Name your Yeti-Man.
2. Build him a life saving device to help him travel through the water to his new home.
3. Take a group selfie with him and share with #savetheyetiman

Visual Thinking

I have been trying to come up with different ways to practice the large amount of vocabulary associated with middle school science.  I actually like the vocabulary, but so many of these words are new to kids, I think they need lots of practice and repetitiveness to understand and connect these terms.

Here are a few of the things that have been successful in my class -- I am looking for other ideas that are fun to help kids increase their science vocabulary.

1. Sketchnotes
I started teaching my 7th graders how to Sketchnote this week.  They are crazy artistic and I love combining art and science. I think this helps them see how a series of words are connected and fit together.  Once we start applying these words to real world problems, it helps them to have a good understanding of the concepts.

Created by Nausheen

Created by Pravallika

2. Heads Up
We played a few games of Heads-Up with the create your own cards version.  This was quite hilarious.  I hear the app Charades is the same, but haven't tried it yet.  The best part about this one was it really helped me to identify some big misconceptions kids had about some of the words.

3. Infopics
We went outside and took pictures of things that represented some of our vocabulary and then created an infopic. I have collected these in a Schoology media album for students to refer back to this year.  The top two pictures were taken with our Pro-Scope iPad microscope attachment that our class received from a Donor's Choose Grant this year.  This one was just fun because we got to go outside and who doesn't love an iPad microscope??

Created by Juliana, Pravallika, Renee, and Anuj

I would love to hear other ways teachers have incorporated fun ways to remember terminology that can be easily embedded into any subject area.