A Whole year of 7th Grade Science – the best one yet!

A link to the whole lot – a year’s worth of successful, fun and free curriculum tested at Orinda Intermediate School.

The Sands of Time Project: Intro to Evolution

An engaging, interactive project to teach the timeline of life with modeling clay, sand, soda bottles, dirt, and a little mystery.

Animal Voice Over Film Festival

The latest project about to launch in 7th grade science, hitting concepts in animal behavior and natural selection as well as quite a few ELA CC standards. Animal stalking and film making, creative script writing skills included as well as hopefully, hilariousness.

I’m excited about this because I’m getting kids to make my favorite kind of YouTube time waster! Here’s a link to the class room ready project with stepping stones and links for a self-paced, student centered project. Let me know how it goes and I’ll update in the comments section too. It’s at NextLesson.org

Classification of Stuff and Species

I finally stumbled upon a better way of introducing the dusty topic of classification with a re-vamped and simplified toy sort. Sheets and pics provided.

Natural Selection, Creationism and the Fork Bird Game from SALI

Setting the theory of natural selection in context and a REALLY fun game that not only teaches how good cheerios taste, but also the theory of natural selection.

So Many Fossils, So Little Time!

How to get through evolution in record time. Fossil record time that is. Plus some management tips I should have learned years back in the mesozoic.

The Evolving Lesson Plan: Events, Eras and Extinctions

The ribbon of time, the walk through time, the crowd around the last 10% of time on Earth when everything happened. Will anyone remember any of it?

The Timeline of Life – Millions and Billions of Years

How to understand the deepness of time? These huge numbers? The endless ages of scum?

Evidence for Evolution – Chicken ‘Arms’

We find evidence that we have a common ancestor with chickens with a dissection and the chicken wing flap…

Evolution Picture Show

Card sorts, Beanie Babies, blocks of wierd but real animals from obscure phyla. It’s time to phyl’em.