Nutella Coffee

Although teachers have a TON to do in the summer, we do have a little free time. My goal for this summer was to learn some fancy new coffee tricks! I have spent way too much money at the coffee shops, so it was time I learned to make the sweet coffee myself.

One of my favorites I have made so far has been Nutella Coffee. This will definitely be a part of my morning routine when school starts back. If you have a self-serve blender, it's a breeze!


This is what you will need: 

2 tbsp of Nutella
Cup of Brewed Coffee
1/4 Cup Milk
1 tbsp of Sugar

Just throw all of the ingredients in the cup and blend! You can adjust the amount of milk/sugar as needed. I like my coffee super sweet! It does not take long to blend. Just blend until smooth.

Once blended, throw in a coffee cup and enjoy! This is one of my absolute favorites!

Citizen Science

One of the most significant things that I have done as a science teacher is implement a citizen science lesson. If you have never done a citizen science lesson in your classroom, I highly recommend it. I had a special opportunity when implementing my lesson, but there are SO many lessons out there to choose from that you could find to fit perfectly into your classroom.

I had the opportunity to be a part of the Kenan Fellows in the 14-15 Cohort in North Carolina. I was able to work with a mentor at the NC Museum of Natural Sciences to study Demodex Mites (mites that live on us!) ...yes...100% of us! As a Kenan Fellow, me and "team mite" had to create a curriculum from our experiences and then implement them into our classroom. Creating the curriculum was the most challenging task that I faced during the Kenan Fellows program, but at the same time, it was one of the most exciting! One of the challenges me and another team member faced was fitting the Demodex mites experiment into the 7th grade curriculum. It fit well into the 8th grade curriculum, but 7th grade was a stretch. It worked nicely while teaching scientific inquiry, which is the direction that we went in; however, science inquiry isn’t tested in 7th grade, which can cause issues with pacing. 

The most exciting thing of all was implementing the curriculum!! I truly built up the mite lab that we were going to do in class. I implemented my curriculum at the beginning of the year, so I barely knew my students. This was a wonderful introduction to my science classroom, and my students had a ball. We have the results of their question, “Do Middle School Students Have Mites?”. My mentor and other researchers know that these mites are on 100% of adults, but they do not know much else. As a class, by students swabbed each others faces to hopefully get mite DNA. We sent the swabs back to my mentor so he could analyze the data. My students were able to do REAL science in REAL time. The data was very valuable to my mentor. The students were also super into the lesson. They asked almost everyday over the year, "Do we have mites?", and we found out...they did! Not all of the tubes showed mite data, but this brought up more questions and conversations. Science never ends!

If you are interested in looking at other citizen science projects for your classroom, here is a link to an awesome site with many resources! SciStarter

Tablets in the Classroom

It's been a while since I have shared anything, but as you all know, teaching can get a little hectic!! However, I wanted to take a moment to thank all of those that donate to Donor's Choose. Just recently, I have received 5 Samsung Tablets through Donor's Choose. Although this is nowhere close to a class set, I have seen what just having 5 in my classroom has done.

We have a little bit of technology in our school, not as much as others, but we are blessed with what we do have. As far as I know, my tablets are the only ones in our school. I plan to do a lot with them, but as for now, I am just using them for "when you are finished" tools, and students can use these to play on the science apps I have downloaded.

I thought that my students may think that was sort of "lame", but I couldn't believe what a motivational tool that it has become. Students that usually may delay their start in their classwork are actually starting on time and completing their assignments correctly.

I am just so thankful to have these to use a motivational tools for my students. I cannot wait to see what else they may bring to the classroom!

Using QR Codes for Notes

I really wanted to use QR codes in some way this year. I created a QR Scavenger Hunt to begin my lesson on the Ozone Layer. I was really curious to know how it was going to go, and then I discover, the kids loved it! 

I created it for individual use at a desk and also for an "around the room" type scavenger hunt. I decided to just have the students sit at their desk and work on these individually.

Students used the app Scan on the iPods to scan QR codes. The QR codes lead to short descriptions about the ozone layer that students recorded on their note sheet. Later, student glued their note sheet into their interactive notebooks. I also had a few students use their smart phones. The students were SOOOO excited to use the iPods as well as their cell phones to take notes. You could tell they never did anything like this before, and they want to do it again. It's funny how I tricked them...they were just taking notes :)

This activity is in my TpT store, and I definitely plan to create more!
http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Ozone-QR-Scavenger-Hunt-1394909

Lesson Reflection Ball

I have spent the past few weeks thinking of easy things that I can do to make class a little more interesting. One of those things that I decided that I was going to do was to create a Lesson Reflection Ball. Can anyone name a kid that doesn't like to throw things in class? Didn't think so.

I just went to Wal-Mart and grabbed a rubber ball for $2.50, and started coming up with some questions. There where many different colors to choose from! It was bigger than I thought it was going to be, so that meant more questions, but I finally came up with 35.

1) What is one thing that you learned today?

2) What are some ways you could share this learning with your parents of family?

3) Why do you believe we’re studying this objective?

4) What’s one thing the teacher did for this objective that you really liked?

5) What is one question you have after today’s lesson?

6) Name 3 things you learned today.

7) What is one thing you found interesting in the lesson today?

8) What is something that stuck with you today?

9) Create a question based off of today’s lesson.

10) Name at least 3 vocabulary words dealing with today’s lesson.

11) What is one thing you knew about the objective before today’s lessons?

12) Today I learned about _________. I still have a questions about ____________.

13) What was the main idea of the lesson today?

14) How will this lesson relate to the real world?

15) Tell three key ideas from the lesson today.

16) Create a metaphor about today’s objective.

17) Today’s lesson: who, what, when, where, and why?

18) Sum up today’s lesson in one single sentence.

19) My favorite thing about today’s lesson was ______________.

20) Make up a true/false questions based off of today’s lesson.

21) I want to know more about ______________.

22) Make up a multiple choice question based off today’s lesson.

23) What was the easiest part of today’s lesson?

24) What was the hardest part of today’s lesson?

25) If you had to teach today’s lesson to another student, could you do it?

26) Identify the most important concept to know to understand today’s lesson.

27) How will you remember today’s lesson?

28) How did you make sense of today’s lesson? Explain.

29) Explain today’s lesson in your own words.

30) Could today’s lesson apply to another subject? How?

31) Give me 5 vocabulary words from today’s lesson. Go!

32) Make up a fill-in-the-blank question based off of today’s lesson.

33) What can you do to study the material you learned today?

34) Did you learn anything that surprised you today?

35) How might today’s lesson help you?

I can't wait to use it in class! It's perfect for that last minute or two before the bell rings.

Beginnings and Word Walls!

I cannot believe that the school year is almost here! Teachers go back in 17 days..wow! Where has my summer gone? Of course, always a teacher, I have been working on decorations for my room, and I decided that it was time to update my science word wall! I have added SO many more vocabulary words. I now have 128 vocabulary words for my word wall. I knew that my students looked at them so much last year, and they were fascinated with the pictures. When I'd ask a question that they didn't know, they would look at the pictures on the word wall cards to try to figure it out, so I knew I'd have to keep this curiosity going, so I created more! If you have already bought my science word wall cards, you will be able to print the update for free. If not, you can download them at TpT. They are perfect of 7th Grade NC Essential Standards.

TpT is also having a sell on August 4th and 5th. All of my products will be 20% off!

Beginning of the Year: Using Teacher Memes

I thought I was so clever when I decided I wanted to use teacher memes to go in my "Beginning of the Year PowerPoint" to introduce rules and procedures; however, I saw that this was not my brilliant idea, but other teachers have already done this!

Even though I was not the one who came up with this great idea, I thought I'd share a few ideas just in case someone would like to incorporate it in their classroom.

Here are a few slides of my "Beginning of the Year PowerPoint" that I will be using in August.

Here is a link to my Pinterest page where I pinned all of the memes I used in my presentation! I can't wait to show my students!

http://www.pinterest.com/knorville13/teacher-funnies/