Tuesday, October 12, 2010

The Science Teacher's Activity-A-Day

0470408812 Over 180 Reproducible Pages of Quick, Fun Projects that
Illustrate Basic Concepts

The Science Teacher's Activity-A-Day, Grades 5-10

New in the 5-Minute Fundamentals Series, this book provides science teachers with a huge selection of quick, fun activities that align with the national science education standards, including 180 easy, five-minute activities that capture learners' attention and introduce lessons.  It’s divided into three units: Physical Science, Life Science, and Earth and Space Science, and all the book's activities can be done with materials that are inexpensive and easy to find.

For new learning to occur, students must make a connection with what they already know and the new content that they're learning.  The Science Teacher's Activity-A-Day is structured to do this by providing two different types of activities: hook activities and sponge activities.  Hook activities enable students to link prior knowledge to a new topic, while sponge activities are designed to engage students' interest at the beginning of a lesson.  For the teacher, the sponge activity can help reveal any misconceptions that students and hook activities help teachers find out what students already know on the topic.

Pam Walker and Elaine Wood each have more than twenty years of science teaching experience. They are the authors of dozens of books for middle and high school science teachers and students, including Crime Scene Investigations and Hands-On General Science Activities with Real-Life Applications, both from Jossey-Bass.

Heidi Says . . . I’ll be the first person to admit – science just isn’t my thing.  Because of that, it’s really hard for me to go beyond the pages of a basic textbook and try to make science learning fun in our homeschool.  This book is just what I need because it covers all the science bases:

  • Physical Science
    Organization of Matter
    Interactions of Matter
    Energy of Motion
    Heat, Light, and Sound Waves
    Magnetism and Electricity
  • Life Science -
    The Cell
    Genetics
    Evolution
    Diversity of Life
    Ecology
    Body Systems
  • Earth Science -
    Structure of Earth Systems
    Earth’s History
    Meteorology
    The Universe
    The Solar System

Looking at some of the topics on the list above, you can see that this book is not written with a Christian worldview.  There are, obviously, some experiments that we won’t be doing.  However, there are enough other activities in this book that we can do to make it worth the price. 

The materials needed are those that are easily available and probably already in your house – a big plus for me because I don’t always have  time to plan ahead. 

NOTE: I received a free copy of this book from Wiley Publishing in exchange for my honest review of it.

1 comment:

Jodi said...

This looks great! ;)

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