Your first year of teaching middle school science can be an exciting, yet challenging year, especially if you are trying to effectively teach. You are eager, nervous and ready to bring your love for science to your students! I remember that first year and feeling uncertain about how to make a great first year for both myself and students! Since I have a few years under my belt, I want to share what I wish I would have known for that first year of teaching middle school science!
There are several effective ways of teaching science, and will help you your first year. Here are my five tips for new science teachers and how to make it a great year!
Prep ahead of time
This is something I’ve gotten into the habit of doing and it is so helpful. Set out the materials that will be needed for the next day before you head home for the day. You never know what emergency might come up or if you’ll need to take the day off. Having everything set out and ready to go will help you come into your classroom feeling prepared. Or if you get sick, you don’t have to explain where to find everything in your classroom.
Vary Your Instruction
Science is an opportunity for your students to learn in many different ways. Even though they are middle schoolers, they are still kids and need varied instruction to engage them! I love incorporating movement, hands-on activities, and cooperative learning to keep my students engaged and on task.
Integrate Other Subjects
I think that this is a wonderfully effective method to teach science. I love showing students that we can use other subjects within our science classroom and vice versa. I find they become more interested in what we’re doing when they’re able to apply their knowledge from math or another subject area.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Find a mentor teacher or search online for lessons and ideas that have worked well for others! There are tons of great resources that you can incorporate where you aren’t recreating the wheel every single time! Your first year is challenging enough, so save yourself some time and headache by using what has worked for others!
You can find a few of my favorite activities over at this post!
Lesson Plans
I see teachers struggling when it comes to creating captivating and engaging science lessons for their middle schoolers. They often ask, “What should my lesson have?” “What will make it exciting for my students?” “How will I know that they have met the objectives?” Lesson plans can be a struggle for a lot of first year students, which is why I created a brand new free guide to planning your science lessons!
If you want my full list of ways to create the perfect lesson, I’ve included the 10 things you need to have in order to have an amazing middle school science lesson. You can grab that freebie below!
[…] Effective teachers are critical in the classroom, for personal and academic reasons. Students are more successful when they have effective teachers. Effective teachers are aware of how to engage their students as well as teach the content correctly. They also possess a high pedagogical content knowledge that allows for them to teach the content into understandable forms for their students. […]