City Nature Challenge

I came across this brilliant challenge which will allow your students to explore nature. It's called City Nature Challenge and it's all about engaging with nature and being a good observer. Here is a video from Cape Town which nicely explains how you can participate:

As you can see from the video it is very easy to participate. I hope the weather will be great this weekend so that everyone can get beautiful pictures!

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina

Bilingual vocabulary wall

Working in a bilingual school makes you really think about the vocabulary you are teaching. I have just started the Cells unit with my grade 8 MYP students and the vocabulary list is pretty extensive. To support my pupils, we created a bilingual vocabulary wall.

I started by translating the list into Chinese using Google translate. To make sure that the translation is accurate, I asked my phenomenal technician to review it. Once she added her corrections, I used the list as a starter and asked my students to write down the words on cards I prepared early. What's more, we can add more words as we progress with the unit. Simple yet effective, that's what I like :)

Here's an example of Grade 10 vocabulary wall:

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina

Let YouTube help you teach Science #17

Today I would like to share with you a phenomenal YouTube channel called acapellascience. Tim Blais is an absolute genius who changes the lyrics of popular songs into scientific beauty. My students absolutely love his videos and other teachers I know also use them for revision. Here are a few more of my favourites:

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina

Traveling Teacher - Mathematics: The Winton Gallery, London, UK

I absolutely love traveling and discovering new places. I always look for science-related locations where I can get inspirations. In my new weekend series I'm going to share some of the places I visited so far.

I'm going to start with photo inspirations from the Science Museum in London where you can visit The Winton Gallery which allows you to explore the importance of mathematics and its role in the world we are living in. Great place to visit with your students.

Science Club: making soap and bath bombs

Hands-on activities provide the best opportunities for students to learn new skills. When designing the scheme of work for my Science Clubs, I like to include a session on soap and bath bombs making. It's a great opportunity to make links between science and real life applications. Below are my tried and tested ways of delivering the session.

Soap making

Here are the ingredients to make soap:
- 100 ml liquid soap/shower gel
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- 20 g gelatin
- 100 ml water
- optional: oats (this will scrub away dead skin cells)

To make your soap, dissolve the gelatin in in hot water. Once cooled down, mix well with your liquid soap or shower gel and pour into molds.

Bath bombs 

The recipe that has worked the best for me is the following one I came across when I was ordering the ingredients for the session:

I hope you're going to try this with your students.

Click here for my Science Club Scheme of Work.

I wish you great lessons!

Karolina

Upthrust practical

I recently had to teach a lesson on upthrust. I wanted to make it more interesting with a class practical and not just have a dry, theoretical lesson. After some research, I came across an interesting practical called "Design a boat" (click here). Despite being designed for primary students, I used it with my Grade 8 MYP Science classes. I was extremely pleased with how much engagement and scientific discussion it created. I really enjoyed watching my pupils going through many designs, testing them and trying to improve it. Having them talk about real life applications was brilliant.

 I wish you great lessons!


 Karolina