Middle School | Teach Green

Some of the funniest moments with my family take place in the car. It doesn’t take much to fuel the hilarity. Yesterday, it was a sign: “Chili Cook-Off and Motorcycle Show.” With one of my sons in middle school, and the other in fourth grade, they naturally made the leap to powering the motorcycles with… um… beans.

Lucky for me, it made me think of following a transit bus in Greenville, South Carolina. I’m used to the odors of the varied restaurants wafting through town, but usually the smells change, since Greenville has its fair share of dining options. But this one food smell stayed constant from north of town, all the way south of town.

Tacos.

As I looked again at the bus, I saw the label: “Powered by Biodiesel.”

I am a huge fan of the concept of taking a cast-off from one industry and using it to power another. That’s why I love the concept of biofuels. I’m not a scientist. The biofuels concept appeals to my inner tinkerer, and makes me think of my dad taking seemingly unrelated parts and building something really cool. I’m also fascinated by how communities work, so the idea that the used vegetable oil from a restaurant in town can be processed and power that same city’s transportation system. It’s so efficient!

Sure there’s still lots to figure out in terms of processing, storage, transportation and special situations like cold-weather climates. However, talking about chili cook-offs, motorcycles and “taco buses” got all four of us talking about how we power cell phones, cars, hospitals and air conditioners yesterday. It was a very natural progression into science topics that my boys will be tackling in just a week’s time, when school starts. And, I’m hoping it will inspire them to keep thinking about ways to streamline energy use and storage in the future.

Here are two lesson plans that talk about energy, where it comes from, and the science students need to know to start thinking about solutions. They hit both science and social studies national standards, and include technology components.

Or, download this free lesson plan on E85, or Ethanol:

Nine-page teacher’s guide (PDF)
Four-page student activity master (PDF)

Let me know what you think, and if you have ideas to expand on them. I’d love to hear if you use them in your classroom!

During the second and third week of camp, we began to introduce tools and machines. We wanted to give students a simple modeling project that would ease them into their use of the equipment and our safety rules and procedures.

Our design challenge was to brainstorm an innovative edible candy or sweet treat that could be marketed and sold in stores. The final prototype would be an over-sized model of the product, built out of foam, painted with acrylic paints and hung from the ceiling of the room by fishing line! Luckily, I ran into a very accomplished entrepreneurer over the summer, named Bridget Graham, who happened to have her own business along these same lines. Read the rest of this entry »

The last couple weeks of school were a blur. We finished up the POGIL activities and the labs and all of the sudden it was the last week of school.

As you know, the last week of school is all about promotion in the 8th grade and preparing the kids for their departure. We had yearend field trips, graduation practice, parties and movies. I had my homeroom kiddos all day and all week. So, no science was done. I like where I ended the year with my science classes. They were looking ahead to what high school science would be like and still able to be a middle schooler while they got a taste of high school. As for me, I am off to a summer filled with college classes (I am working towards my PhD) and establishing my curriculum for next year. Read the rest of this entry »

I love chemistry! We have been looking at the atomic theory in greater detail to prepare my students for high school. They will be learning about it again in 9th and then again in 11th grade. My students have completed two inquiry labs where they used a flow chart that they created from experimenting with chemical reactions and indicators to identify an unknown substance and then to identify a unknown solution’s pH. I found the labs in a book called “Inquiry-Based Experiments in Chemistry”. The labs went really well. Read the rest of this entry »

For the past couple of months we’ve been working hard on a project that uses the exciting technology and images of Google Earth to show how energy is used and produced all over the world. We call it the GM Google Earth Project.

Read the rest of this entry »

And here we are, back in Michigan. 500 hours of planning, 30 hours of manning a booth, 3,500 recycled newspaper pencils and 350 bamboo USB drives later, NSTA’s 2010 national conference is officially over.

As one who works behind the screen most of the time, it was a really really awesome experience for me to get to meet the teachers on the other side of the screen and be able to give away resources that they could take back to their classrooms. Read the rest of this entry »

Every year I have trouble with this activity. I have tried three different versions of the same activity to allow students to use the same process Mendeleev used to organize the periodic table. It involves organizing 27 elements by using two of their properties. The most recent version gave them the option of four different properties to choose from….This year’s version was more successful than past years because it was more structured, but nearly half of the students struggled severely with the complex nature of this classifying activity. During a couple of classes, I broke out the document camera and started organizing the elements myself as an example using the projector. It helped move along the groups that were still struggling. There were groups that simply copied me, but they understood the concept more than when they were struggling. The biggest success from this activity was the fact that most of the groups (although frustrated) did not shut down. They continued to try. I am feeling that some of the kids are not developed enough in their abstract thought to classify using two properties. The trick will be how to differentiate this activity next year. As soon as I figure out the best way to do this activity, I will laminate the cards and use them every year. Read the rest of this entry »

In section two of our chemistry unit, we are studying chemical reactions. We started the unit with notes (yuck! I hate notes). Unfortunately it was a necessary evil. I needed to give basic information that is difficult to learn in a lab, like chemical equation anatomy and so forth. Read the rest of this entry »

Chemistry, chemistry, chemistry everywhere. We dove into chemistry a couple weeks ago. So far we have done three labs. To teach states of matter, I used a lab I found online at the INQUIRY IN MOTION Web site. It is a free Web site through Clemson University (you have to register, but the lesson plans are free).

The lab I used had my students use their own senses to come up with definitions for three of the states of matter. It worked out well and the kids seemed to enjoy it. Next we moved on to state changes. We used milk jugs and hot water to show molecular movement. I have been saving milk jugs all year for this lab and some of the students brought jugs in as well. It was a great way to show reuse of the milk jugs after their primary use. I was not as thrilled with this lab, since my students still have a hard time visualizing what was happening to the molecules of water. I ended up supplementing the lab with animations and drawings. Read the rest of this entry »

Winter break was nice, but I worked way too much. I had to go into my classroom every 3-4 days to feed all of the critters. We have finches, three 20-gallon tanks full of fish (tequila sunrise, mollies and goldfish), red wigglers, daphnia and planarian. I think that’s it, oh wait we also have isopods and mealworms. I also needed to come in to keep an eye on the hydroponics system to make sure it didn’t leak all over the place. I planted some household plants in the hydroponics system that were propagated. They are doing well, actually really well, and I finally have some lettuce flourishing in the hydroponics system. I was not letting the lettuce grow big enough before I transplanted them into the clay pebbles. I have been able to harvest some cilantro as well. As a class, we will try to transplant lettuce again in about a month. Hopefully we will be able to finish our genetically modified food experiments that we had started back in November. Read the rest of this entry »

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Teach Green

Lessons from the green classroom

Archive for the “Middle School” Category

Middle Schoolers, Science and Tacos – Are We Talking About Biofuels?

An Edible STEM Arrangement

School’s Out for Summer!

Preparing Them for High School Science

The GM Google Earth Project: Exploring Energy Around the World

An Electric Car + Bamboo USB Drives + Reading Terminal Market for Lunch = NSTA 2010

Class, Meet Mendeleev and Rutherford

Attention Getting Demos for Chemical Reactions

Chemistry Everywhere

Tequila Sunrise, Mollies and Goldfish

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