4 Easy Ways to Start Your Earth Science Class
I’m going to share with you exactly how I teach my second week of school during my Earth Science class! Before I even begin the school year, I plan out what my theme is going to be for each week. This helps me stay on track and remember the most important points I want to stress during the year.
This week, our theme is Thinking Like An Earth Scientist! I’ve broken this blog post down into 4 ways to start your Earth Science Class because each day I choose a different way to accomplish this theme. The second week of school for us always starts on a Tuesday after a holiday, so this structure is perfect for a four-day school week.
I want my students to understand what science is, why we study Earth Science, and get an introduction to some of the terms they’re going to hear all year.
What Is Science?
We’re kicking off the week with an independent, in-seat activity that will get the kids thinking about science in a different way.
I have the students complete this FREE What is Science Cube activity from TPT.
Students use their laptops/Chromebooks to work through the activity to complete their cubes. This actually took the students the entire class period to finish. I emphasized the importance of neatness, color, and thoughtful answers. These are major grading points for me, so this is a great opportunity for me to remind students of some of the class culture we talked about during Week 1 of Back to School.
I created a rubric to use to grade the What I Science Cube activity. Feel free to save it below to use for your classroom as well.
Overall, this is a great slow roll into our second week of school. The students have something to work on, and I can circulate and help where needed.
Why Study Earth Science?
This is my day 2! My essential question for today is “Why study Earth Science?”
I start out class with this video as an introduction.
After the video, we have a discussion about why we study Earth Science. I do this because it’s important to me that the students don’t just think everything we learn is just information to regurgitate on their test. What we’re learning in class has real uses in our everyday lives.
For this next part of the lesson, I showed students this video about Tilly Smith. And yes, I already know this video is old. Be prepared that the students will let you know as well…they are middle schoolers after all, but it’s a great video, and I promise it’s memorable. The bit about the frothy beer tends to stick with my students the most, of course.
Tilly Smith learned about tsunamis in school and later recognized warning signs of a tsunami while on vacation with her family. It’s an easy example for students to understand how we can take Earth Science outside the classroom because Tilly was obviously a student too!
After the video, we talked about how learning science can help us understand what’s happening around us and sometimes help other people.
Students will work in groups to come up 3-5 different ways science can be used in their lives to understand what’s happening around us and to help other people. The examples have to be realistic for their actual life and make sense in the real world.
Models, Hypotheses, Theories, Laws, Data
Day three is where we’re starting to get into vocabulary they’ll be seeing throughout the year. Most of this should be a good science review for them.
I start the class with this video, and while they watch, I write down the definition on the board so they have the important terms in front of them.
Theory: A well-supported explanation of how or why something happens in the natural world. Theories EXPLAIN.
Law: Describes patterns and relationships in the natural world. Laws DESCRIBE.
After the video, I give students a handout they can complete while we go over these slides, which cover models, hypotheses, scientific theories, scientific laws, and data.
I use this lesson in several of my science classes because these aren’t just Earth Science terms; students are definitely going to see these terms again.
My goal for today is for students to complete the worksheet, but if they don’t have time, I give them a few extra minutes on day 4.
Earth Science Career Exploration
This is our last day of teaching my intro to Earth Science. I end the week with a Earth Science Career Exploration.
I give the students a list of careers: Geologist, petrologist, mineralogist, seismologist, hydrologist, marine scientist, meteorologist, astronomer, engineer, climatologist, and astrobiologist.
Each student picks one that sounds interesting and spends the rest of class using their chromebooks/laptops to complete the worksheet.
You can download the worksheet for FREE here.
This is the perfect way to end the week because it gives students a practical end to the information they’ve learned all week. They can see that people use these careers in real life and make a difference in our world.
If I have extra time, I will cold call on students to share some of what they learned.
I hope you loved these ideas for your second week of teaching Earth Science to your middle school students. At this point in the year, students are still learning routines and classroom culture, and I’m still learning names and personalities, so this is a great slow roll into our content.
