For ALL teachers

http://www.barbican.org.uk/canihaveaword
This is a great site for creative writing for middle and high school students. Lots of great ideas to help incorporate a little Language Arts in your lessons.

Cool Chemistry!

I stumbled upon the Chemical Heritage Foundation's web site, chemheritage. org . There you will find Chemical Achievers that includes images and biographies of significant chemical innovators. They also have info about about CHF’s exhibits, upcoming awards programs, conferences, and events.

Some other cool sites are:
http://nobelprize.org

http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks is a great site to discover the impact that chemists have made.

Inquiry Based Science Project

http://web.stclair.k12.il.us/splashd/chllgepg.htm

This site has a list of Inquiry-Based Science Project (IBSP) Challenging Problems. The projects allow students to design and conduct their own investigationns and then share their data with students from around the country and the world! Great for science fair stuff or even an AP class.

GRAPH? How do I make a GRAPH?

The most uttered question about graphing from my students is "What goes on the x-axis?" or "What goes on the y-axis?". I found an acronym to use to help students know which variable goes on which axis. The acronym is DRY MIX. The letters stand for DRY = Dependent, Responding, Y-Axis and MIX = Manipulated, Independent, X-Axis. In other words, the dependent variable goes on the y-axis and the independent variable goes on the x-axis.

This website, http://www.greenville.k12.sc.us/websites/riverm/mdacko/drymix.html , has a better explanation.

Great Professional Development

I attended this class in the summer of 2005. I live in TX but the course was in Exton, PA and included a trip to Cape Cod. It was SO much fun. I made this video for the instructor to use to show prospective students. If you're interested visit http://www.plsweb.com/graduate_courses/full_course_listing/on-site/live/ and page down to Exton, PA. And check out the video, too!!

World Ocean Day

*World Ocean Day is June 8, 2007
http://www.oceanconservancy.org/site/PageServer?pagename=worldoceansday

Something to use if you're still in school...

Whether you live along the coast or far inland, each one of us is connected to the world's ocean. Make your ocean connection on June 8th! www.theoceanproject.org/wod .

Starting the year off right

Ok, I realize that for most of us school has just ended. HOWEVER, we all know that the first days of school are crucial to the success of the rest of the school year.

One thing that plagued me last year was getting students to turn in homework. I ran across something from Harry Wong's articles on the Teachers.Net website (http://teachers.net/wong/) about using a "Pink Slip". It was nothing more that a half-page form that students completed when they didn't have an assignment to turn in. There was a space for all the usual stuff, like date, assignment name, etc. but there was also a bank of reasons to check off such as forgot, didn't have materials at home, left homework at home and even some extra lines for kids to write their own reason. Check out the article here and there's a copy of the "Pink Slip" http://teachers.net/wong/SEP06/.