Some Relevant Blogs

I have included 5 blogs or resources in this initial posting.

I am currently teaching 8th grade physical science and I am constantly checking to see if what I am asking students to do in the classroom is consistent with other classrooms.  I have found that what I am doing in the classroom is consistent with other middle school programs across the country.  Two great resources for the science classroom have been sciencespot.com and middleschoolscience.com.  The authors of these websites regularly post ideas and resources for teaching and designing instruction for middle school students.  I have included items from these two teachers in my instruction and have shared these sources with colleagues at my school.  The sites have a lot of information on chemistry and general science topics.  There are handouts set up for immediate use and if you use interactive notebooks, some are ready for that as well.

http://mysciencelessons.wordpress.com/

http://trimpe.blogspot.com/

As a National Science Teacher's Association member, I find that there are a lot of resources available for instructional design in the science classroom.   The NSTA blog has information on many areas of education as well as insight into new ideas on science education.   There are posts from researchers in education as well as classroom teachers.

http://nstacommunities.org/blog

The last two blogs look at some new areas of instructional design.  I am considering the incorporation of these ideas in my classroom.  The first blog shares information on the flipped classroom.  The flipped classroom moves lectures and presentation of material from the classroom to podcasts and out of class assignments.   The in-class assignments and work are for what traditionally is done as homework.  I am still at the evaluation stage of this as many of my students do not have access to internet and technology from home.  There will need to be some alternatives for these students, which are suggested by the authors.  Kelly Morgan has moved to a mastery learning approach to instruction in her classroom.  She has some interesting ideas that may be possible to incorporate into the middle school classroom, but will have to be adapted since her experience is in high school.

http://blendedclassroom.blogspot.com

http://kellymorganscience.blogspot.com