Links to Science Related Resources

Biology in Elementary Schools home

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Biology In Elementary Schools is a Saint Michael's College student project from a course that ran between 2007 and 2010 and fully described in this book chapter. The student-created resources have been preserved here for posterity. Link under 'toolbox' for printer-friendly versions of the exercises. Click on handouts to print full resolution versions. Please see Wikieducator's disclaimer, our safety statement, and the Creative Commons licensing in English and in legalese.
Please add useful links for biology in elementary schools to this page. Provide a brief (one or two lines) description of the resources available on the site you have entered.

If you can imagine some additional useful categories, please create them. If your link defies our categories, make a new category.

A good biology project for third graders may be to examine and take notes on the process of how a plant grows. With this kind of experiment, they will see the different stages that a plant goes through, what is needed to make the plant grow; what kind of environment, dietary needs, etc., and what different parts there are. Each week the students will record what they see in a journal and will follow the plants development for a number of weeks.

Zoology

Earthworm dissection alternative Worm watch provides an electronic 'worm tour' as a viable alternative for dissection.

Environmental education

The Vermont Institute of Natural Science has several educational programs including Environmental Learning for the Future (ELF).

The Chittenden County Regional Stormwater Education Program includes a video on stormwater and a kid-friendly interactive unite called What's Happening in Stormville.

Project learning tree; this quote is directly from their web site: Project Learning Tree® is an award winning, multi-disciplinary environmental education program for educators and students in PreK-grade 12. PLT, a program of the American Forest Foundation, is one of the most widely used environmental education programs in the United States and abroad. PLT continues to set the standard for environmental education excellence

Project wet; this quote is directly from their web site: The mission of Project WET is to reach children, parents, educators, and communities of the world with water education. We invite you to join us in educating children about the most precious resource on the planet – water.

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Food and Nutrition

USDA's new (in 2005) food pyramid is well presented on this site. My Pyramid Blastoff Game is quite good and gives feedback on healthy eating and exercise in a fun computer-game format.

A good food and health related experiment for younger elementary students would be to bring in a bunch of different fruits, examine where the seeds are located and their functions. Students would also guess and look into how each different seed travels and grows and compare their differences. It would help teach the students healthy eating habits as well as provide them with a hands-on way to learn about what exactly it is they are eating. [Biology Online]

When learning about matter a helpful project that will help the kids understand density is to have sugar and salt mixed together and ask them to seperate the two. It is impossible to do this by eye since both substances look so similar. However, once they are placed in water one sinks while the other floats. This helps the child see that looks can be deceivingly and that there is more to the make up of an object than size, shape, and color.

Educational standards

State

Science

Vermont

Vermont's Grade expectations for science

Biology

[InstructorWeb] This website gives a variety of lesson plans regarding basic topics in biology such as habitats, dinosaurs, and plants.

Math

Vermont

Vermont's Grade expectations for math: Algebra Statistics Geometry and measurement Number and operations

Collections of links

Teachers, professors, and others post collections of links. Rather than transferring those links here, perhaps we should link to those collections directly.

Bill Nye This website is adapted from the popular children's science learning show, "Bill Nye the Science Guy". The website has lots of fun activities and facts that would be ideal for teachers to check out or even for students to explore. It is interactive with music, picture effects and fun ways to learn science.

Biology in Motion

This website has videos that will supplement lessons and animate the ideas that teachers want their students to learn. It is interactive as students can move through the videos or the teacher can show them to the class as a group.

Krat's creatures

This site is great for children who are beginning to learn about the variety of animals on earth and would like to explore this in more depth. The site provides pictures, stories, bios about the explorers who are learning about animals, and questions so they are able to quiz themselves once they learn the basics. It's a fun link and would be enjoyable for children of various ages.

http://www.internet4classrooms.com/science_elem.htm Susan Brooks & Bill Byles (2000) < www.internet4classrooms.com/science_elem.htm > [10 Jan 07] This website is very accessible. It provides a wide variety of science topics that would be taught at an elementary level, with each topic containing links to resources that will help students and teachers better learn the subject material that is being addressed. The site also contains links for assessment and practice modules.

http://oncampus.richmond.edu/~pstohrhu/urclasses/science/science.html Patricia M. Stohr-Hunt (2006) < oncampus.richmond.edu/~pstohrhu/urclasses/science/science.html >

This is a collective site with tons of further resources. It has content and pedagogical resources along with other general resources including teaching under standards, considering student differences and getting home/parental involvement. This site has links for lesson plans and many science topics that we may want to teach.

http://www.ncsu.edu/imse/4/elementaryEd.htm. IMSEnet is brought to you by the SERVIT Group, Department of Mathematics, Science, and Technology Education, North Carolina State University. 2001.

This is a collective site with several science activities and experiments for elementary students. It also contains links to a teacher lesson plans page and web-based networks.

Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility - Office of Science Education

This is a collection of hands-on activities for different grade levels.

Zoom for Kids PBS Kids This website is related to the television show on PBS. This website provides useful ideas for experiments that can be done with kids. All experiments posted on the website provide user feedback. Therefore you are able to read how the experiment turned out before trying to recreate it.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute A site with many different experiments for children to perform. Experiments that answer questions many students have about science.

The Teacher's Guide (Plants and Flowers) This is a great website if you are teaching your class about plants. It has pictures and experiments that the the students can use to enhance their learning.

Discovery Education

This website offers various science related videos that can be used in the classroom. For each of the videos there is a related hands on lesson for teachers to use.

http://sciencebuddies.org/science-fair-projects/project_ideas/PlantBio_measuring_growth.shtml

This website talks about plants; all the way from weighing plants, the root mass, plant health and more.

PBS Teacher
This website lets you choose a grade range and topic and provides several lessons for each one. It also offers other resouces for teachers on the main page, such as media products and links to other helpful websites.

Newton's Apple
This site offers an alphabetically arranged list of teacher guides for many science related topics. Each guide provides questions to think about, an overview, an activity and resources.

Biology Lessons for Prospective and Practicing Teachers
This site is brought to you by San Diego State University. The site is designed for prospective and practicing teachers. It provides lessons in Molecules & Cells and Population Biology. This site includes a teacher's guide for the lessons as well as student instruction.

Owl Lesson Plan This site offers many lesosn plans and ideas for teaching biology to grades 1-8. Most of the lessons can be adapted to fit any grade level. The particular link above will bring you to a fun, hands-on lesson plan about owls.

http://www.miamiherald.com/tropical_life/story/360324.html This website offers an article about the benefits of learning about nutrition and life sciences by growing a garden. It focuses on a program called "Plant A Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative" taking place in Miami-Dade public elementary schools. Students are also given a chance to learn about plant anatomy and healthy decisions.

http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/chsmell.html This website explains a series of experiments that teach children what senses are and how they work. You can blindfold them or have them cover their eyes with their hands, and ask of them to recognize different sounds, smells, tasting different things and tell you what they are, recognizing objects by touching them.

http://biologymaterial.com/biology_experiments This website allows children to see that breathing is essential to life. It teaches children to estimate their lung capacity and see how different actions can increase their breath rate.

http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/Science/bugs/html It's a cool site on the difference between insects and why they interact with the world the way they do. The children can learn why some bugs are shaped the way they are and why they have adapted to their environments they way they have.

Elementary Education Resources: Science--Biology (Birds Resources) This page provides links to numerous to resources, activities and lesson plans about birds that are geared toward elementary school students.

http://biology.about.com/od/biologylessonplans/a/aa052005a.htm This page includes a number of hands on science experiments to teach about a number of different subjects. The site uses fun activities to teach about bugs, animals, and plants.

Funology A website directed towards making studies fun for kids as the website states "the fun Science". Although this website appears to be just about games, actually I found great experiments for kids to learn about their environment. For example there is an experiment that enables the kids to see what oils spills do to the environment. In addition to Biology there are lab experiments for teaching about the Weather, Chemistry, and Physics.

Food Pyramid This website is a great way of introducing the importance of eating a healthy diet. It provides a great program that gives students the opportunity to measure or observe their own eating habits and how it effects their lifestyle.

[2] This website is a great resource, there are hands-on projects of all kinds and for many different grade levels. Good luck and enjoy the hands-on learning experience!