Interactive+Science+Sites

=Interactive Science Sites= []

Explorelearning is a website that has interactive science and math lab simulations, student guides, and lesson plans for grades 3 through 12. The simulations allow the students to take part in activities that might not be feasible in a classroom. For example, there is a simulation for wind patterns where students can see the movement and direction of air on the coast throughout the day. This is something that they would not be able to see through a hands-on experiment and is difficult for them to grasp without seeing a simulation like this one. Another example that I use is a simulation for heredity. The activity shows aliens passing certain traits from parents to offspring and it requires students to make predictions and test their own hypotheses. I usually use at least one explorelearning lesson per unit, sometimes as a lesson and other times as an at-home assignment for the students to complete on their own.

The best part about the interactive simulations is that you can adapt the student exploration sheet because it is a downloadable word document. You can modify the experience for different levels simply by changing the document. I have also use the website to show demonstrations if I did not feel that the entire lab was useful. There are over 450 simulations that can be used in various ways throughout math and science classes. Anyone can try a free trail for 30 days, or subscribe to the website. The catch is that students need to create accounts in order to use the simulations that you set up for each class. To get the most out of subscriptions, it is possible to delete students after each assignment and have them recreate their login each time they use the website, which works well especially if you have them work in pairs. If you are planning to use the site more frequently, you might have to get larger subscriptions for more kids.

[] I was told about zingylearning by another 8th grade science teacher in Massachusetts who, like me, struggled with the idea of planning a massive “review” before the 8th grade MCAS test in May, which assesses the 8th graders on all topics that they learned from 6th through 8th grade in science and technology. Zingylearning is a website that is directly aligned with the Massachusetts Frameworks and each lesson reflects a unit of study that the students would have bee familiar with. It allows teachers to set up accounts for their classes and assign various lessons and topics for students to work through. The lessons are informative, interactive, and engaging for the students and always conclude with an assessment that you can use for further instruction. For example, I assigned one lesson per week and I used the results to create mini-lessons on topics that most students struggled with. I was able to also create small study groups after school for topics that a few students struggled with so that I did not spend the class time on topics that most of the students had already mastered. This is an extremely user-friendly site that is convenient in the fact that it provides you with immediate feedback and it also is directly aligned with the standards.