Whether you are new to teaching science, or you’ve been doing it a while, you probably work hard to create engaging and fun science classroom lessons for your students. Those that love both science and teaching have a passion to share that love of science with their students.
Sometimes I find that students just aren’t as thrilled about learning the content as much as I am, so I have worked hard to research best practices to keep students engaged and learn the material more deeply rather than just memorizing material for a test, moving on, and forgetting about it.
In my last post, I discussed ways to reduce student overwhelm and explained seven different things that you can do within your lessons to help students learn easier and reduce information overload to their working memory.
In this post, I will continue to discuss some ways to make your lessons both engaging, easier for students to retain the information, and other research-based strategies that will guarantee your students will be obsessed with your lessons and learn to love science as much as you do! It helps to bring the WOW Factor!
Pre-Assessments to Unlock Prior Knowledge
After you have implemented your WONDER strategies and your students engaged and excited about what they are going to learn, it’s time for you and your students both to see what they already know about the topic. You can do this by giving them a pre-assessment. These can be given before a lesson or even before a unit.
This is your chance to see what, during and after the lesson, you really need to dive in on, and your students can see as well. These are a great addition to your engaging and fun science classroom lessons!
Anticipation Guides
One of my favorite pre-assessments to give is an anticipation guide. Why? Because, it’s kind of a 2-for-1. You are able to activate their prior knowledge to see what they already know, and then after the lesson, you are able to see what they learned in the process, AND they must provide evidence for how they know this.
Anticipation guides also help you to hit the most important content that students need to know right in the beginning. The things that are going to be the most essential concepts to know can be put into the anticipation guide so that these things are top of mind as students go through the lesson.
KWL
KWLs are also one of my favorite ways to pre-assess my students. This can be done individually or as a whole class. This give students a little bit freer rein to share what they already know. It’s not as focused as an anticipation guide but allows students to really dive deep into what they really know about the content.
If you don’t know what a KWL is, it’s a three-column pre-assessment where students first write down what they know, then they write down what they want to learn, and then after the lesson, they write down some new things that they’ve learned.
It’s also a 2-for-1! You can use it before and after the lesson.
Other Pre-assessments
I will say that KWL and Anticipation Guides are definitely my favorite pre-assessments. You can learn more about these here.
There are other things that you can do to pre-assess your students. Here are some examples:
- Ask a discussion question.
- Have students put items in categories where they THINK they should go.
- Have students create a timeline of the order in which they think events happened.
- Draw a picture related to the topic.
- Use a concept map.
Encourage collaboration when completing the pre-assessments!
Engaging Activities Within the Lesson
Once you have helped your students to get excited about the topic and you have activated prior knowledge, now it’s time to learn ALL of the things, but remember to follow the steps to reduce overwhelm!
Along with this, there are engaging activities that you can include IN the lesson to enhance the learning experience. Instead of doing all of the activities after the lesson, you might as well include them inside! Trust me, there are plenty of more activities that you can do after the lesson to go deeper into the depth of knowledge levels. Start simple, then move forward!
So, what activities am I talking about? Here are some examples:
Discussion and Recall Questions:
Give students an opportunity to think a little deeper about the content that they were just exposed to in your science class. For example, say you just told your students about the immune system and how your body responds when you are sick or hurt. Give them an opportunity to discuss a time when they were exposed to a pathogen and explain what happened to them!
Drag-and-Drop Questions
Drag-and-drop activities can also have to engaging and fun science classroom lessons! Are you not doing digital lessons? That’s ok! There are other ways to distribute the questions to your students, either by paper or virtually. What do I mean by drag-and-drop? Well, these are just questions that I include in my lessons that allow students to stop and think about what they just learned and either answer a multiple-choice or true/false question.
For example, say your students have just been taught about the advantages and disadvantages of solar energy. Then, they are given a true/false question: Equipment for solar energy is inexpensive to install. They can drag the arrow to the answer. It’s just a much more engaging way to formatively assess students!
Category Sorts
This is slightly deeper into the depth of knowledge levels and is great to do at the closing of a lesson before you dive even deeper into more complex levels. This gives students the opportunity to put things into categories where they make more sense!
For example, say your students just learned about the organization of the human body and what cells, tissues, organs, organ systems, and organisms are. To test their own knowledge, they can have the opportunity to sort examples of different levels of organization into the appropriate category.
Graphic Organizers/Concept Maps
There are so many other tools that students can use to organize their knowledge. Students can complete four corner vocabulary charts, Venn diagrams, tree maps, and so much more. Putting a concept map into the lesson while students are learning is a great way to get them thinking!
For example, say students are learning about the difference between mechanical and electromagnetic waves. Students can complete a graphic organizer and Venn diagram to organize their knowledge.
Vocabulary Matching
Vocabulary is an essential part of science. Students can actually understand concepts, but the vocabulary makes connections between topics as well as conversation with others much smoother! I was actually told that if a student knows the vocabulary at the end of the year, they will be able to pass their end-of-year science test, no problem! Of course, I want them to know the vocabulary and extend well beyond that; however, setting the foundation with vocabulary is crucial.
Within the lesson, you can review vocabulary in all of the ways listed above, but you can also include, sort of, a vocabulary test. Just a review of definitions can go a long way. For example, when discussing water quality indicators, you can ensure that your students understand six different things that scientist look at when checking the quality of water.
Video Websites for Learning Science
Not only are there great things that you can embed inside of your lessons to make them more engaging, there are outside resources that you can include as well. There are many websites for learning science. For example, videos on YouTube can really help engage your students in ways that you might not be able to do yourself. Videos can show different online science experiments that you are unable to do in class, give an in-depth look at a topic, take students to places that you aren’t able to take them to, break down a topic into an understandable form, and so much more! There are a lot of free science videos that can enhance your lesson. For example, when learning about visible light, you can have your students take a deeper look into why the sky is blue.
The possibilities are endless with a science education video!
Science for Student Articles
In addition to exploring video resources, there are articles online to add to your classroom activities in science and contribute to making science engaging for your students. There are content articles, current event articles, and more! Here are some of my favorite places to look for articles to add to your engaging and fun science classroom lessons:
Other Science Online Learning Tools
So, I’ve already mentioned that videos and articles from outside resources are valuable, but there are also some other online learning tools that are great to include in your lessons!
One of my favorites is PhET Simulations. For example, as you are teaching balancing chemical equations, to give your students practice within the lesson, they can practice this simulation.
Google Maps is also a great online learning tool to use in science. For example, if you are teaching about biomes and you wanted to look at a particular location, Google Maps is a great option for students to explore these biomes! Get a closer look at the Amazon Rainforest!
There is a fun science website for everything!
Have fun creating your engaging and fun science classroom lessons!
Help your students master science content!
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