Now in its eleventh year, Earth Science Week is designed to promote awareness of the importance of the earth sciences. The theme of Earth Science Week 2008 is “No Child Left Inside.” Being held October 12-18, Earth Science Week 2008 will encourage young people to learn about the geosciences by getting away from the television, off the computer, and out of doors. Here are some great resources you will find useful in raising student awareness of the earth sciences.

Earth Science Week 2008
Go to the Earth Science Week web page for more details and plenty of resources including an Educator Guide to the 3D movie Journey to the Center of the Earth. The Educator Guide, in the form of a comic book, uses the movie to explore where “science fact meets science fiction.” The 2008 Earth Science Week Toolkit is available and can be purchased for the price of shipping. The navigation bar provides links to activities and research projects for teachers and students, contests, publicity ideas, a 12-month activity calendar, posters, and CD-ROMs.

NSDL Middle School Portal: Earth Science Publications
Peruse the Explore in-Depth publications for comprehensive teaching and learning activities and lessons on topics such as:
The Reason for the Seasons,
Oceans, Climate and Weather,
Plate Tectonics, and
What Goes Around Comes Around.

Exemplary Resources for Middle School Math and Science blog posts connect you to two to four timely resources on these earth science topics:
El Nino,
The International Polar Year,
The Powerful Punch of a Hurricane, and
Using Real Data in Environmental Science.

Digital Library for Earth System Education (DLESE)
This digital library, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, provides access to high quality collections of resources for teachers and students, including lesson plans, maps, visualizations, assessment activities, and online courses. From the home page, choose Getting started with DLESE to find the lesson, activity or resource you need today.

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Why take class time to investigate fractals? Granted, they are geometric figures and worthy of study for that reason alone. Moreover, their use in art and other areas connects mathematics to the world outside the textbook, as recommended by the NCTM Connections Standard. But a study of fractals also opens discussion of algorithm, dimension, and iteration, concepts that would be above the middle school level if it weren’t for the possibility of illustrating them visually in fractals.

Cynthia Lanius’ Fractal Unit
A former mathematics teacher created this unit for middle school students. The lessons begin with a discussion of why we study fractals and then provide step-by-step explanations of how to make fractals, first by hand, and then using Java applets. But the unit goes further; it actually explains the properties of fractals in terms that make sense to students and teachers alike. Excellent material!

Fractals Unleashed
One of the most comprehensive educational sites on fractals! It includes an illustrated and animated tutorial on the mathematics underlying fractals, examples of applications of fractals, from nature to the Star Trek movies, plus a gallery of images.

Fractal Modeling Tools
These online tools allow users to create images of the Mandelbrot and Julia sets, the Sierpinski gasket, and the Koch snowflake. Go directly to the Fractal Microscope and experiment! Students from middle school through college will be awed by the beauty of the images. As they use the microscope to enlarge any part of a fractal, they can see firsthand the self-similarity of the fractal.

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The Ocean Project, a network of aquariums, science museums, and conservation organizations, has designated June 8 as World Ocean Day. The network’s web site offers resources for these institutions to use in making the public aware of the significance of the ocean. In the resources below, you’ll find background information and lesson plans to help your students understand the importance of the ocean.

Ocean Explorer
This National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration site provides standards-based lesson plans, multimedia presentations and learning activities, descriptions of careers, professional development resources, the history of ocean exploration, and much more.

NOVA Online: Into the Abyss
This site chronicles the ambitious expedition that occurred in June and July 1998 a mile and a half beneath the sea off the Pacific Northwest coast where scientists attempted to retrieve several black smoker chimneys from the seafloor. These chimneys are home to bizarre life forms that thrive far beyond the reach of the sun’s light.

International Year of the Ocean
Created for the 1998 Year of the Ocean, this site has a wealth of features in the Kids’ and Teachers’ Corner. Included are an educator’s guide, fact sheets, unit plans, and poster.

Visit to an Ocean Planet - Classroom Activities
More than 40 classroom activities from this web version of the Visit to an Ocean Planet CD-ROM are grouped under climate, oceanography, and life in our oceans. Each activity is correlated to the national standards. Among the topics are properties of fresh water and sea water, deep ocean circulations, wind-driven currents and bioluminescence.

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Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org.

Algebra can be hard to visualize. Learning to show relationships between symbolic expressions and their graphs opens an avenue to really seeing algebraic patterns. According to the NCTM Standards, at the middle school students move from plotting points to exploring the graphs of lines, including slope and intercept.

An Introduction to the Coordinate Plane
This is a fun but serious introduction to Cartesian coordinates. Students work interactively online to plot points of integer pairs, to deal with changing the scale of a graph, and to consider “tricky” graphs.

Coordinate Graphing
Another site on the basics of coordinate graphing with opportunities to practice plotting points. This is actually a complete lesson on the subject—introduction, objectives, procedures, and extensions—plus excellent interactive games for students to practice their point-plotting skills.

Lines and Slope
At this site, students learn to draw a line and find its slope. Joan, a cartoon chameleon, is used throughout the tutorial to demonstrate the idea of slope visually. Background information on solving equations and graphing points is laid out clearly, followed by a step-by-step explanation of how to calculate slope using the formula. Students also observe the slope of horizontal, vertical, parallel, and perpendicular lines, not a usual topic at a beginning level. Finally, the slope-intercept form (y = mx + b) is carefully set out.

Grapher: Algebra (Grades 6-8)
Using this online manipulative, students can graph functions of their choice—including functions with square roots, exponents, and fractions. In fact, they can graph up to three functions in the same window, a useful capability when considering points of intersection. Also, they can zoom in on a region of the graph and trace the function paths to find particular coordinates. A powerful tool for exploring graphs!

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Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org.

This article first appeared in Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears online magazine June 1, 2008. The article has been modified to include middle school math and science examples. All versions of this article are licensed under a Creative Commons License.

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Have you ever wondered how you could get your own web site on the Internet, how much it would cost, or what technology skills you would need? Have you ever wanted to put one of your lessons on the web so that students could access it whenever they needed to? Have you wanted to share some of your favorite online resources with your students and their families? What about videotaping the directions for a class project and having the video available 24/7 so that your students and their families could watch it whenever they liked?

There are hundreds of free web-hosting sites; in addition, most email providers give customers access to a personal web page as part of the regular service. However, the “charge” for most free web-hosting sites is that the host gets to advertise on the page. Storage and download amounts can also be an issue. Once you’ve found a free or paid web host, there may be many things that you need to know and be able to do before you can publish your content to the web.

Three hosting sites specifically designed for educational audiences allow you to publish to the web for free in a relatively painless way - Instructional Architect (IA), Filamentality, and TeacherTube. Both IA and Filamentality provide template-driven interfaces for designing and publishing web pages. Filamentality has templates for five formats - Hotlist, Treasure Hunt, Sampler, Scrapbook, and WebQuest. IA allows you to build folders similar to Favorites in Internet Explorer and then organize those links, adding introductions, questions, and instructions for students. With TeacherTube you can upload videos and attach support files, which can include lessons and activities, assessments, and video notes.

INSTRUCTIONAL ARCHITECT (IA)
http://ia.usu.edu/
IA was developed at Utah State University in 2002 with funding from the National Science Foundation. IA enables teachers to design lesson plans, study aids, and homework assignments using online learning resources from the National Science Digital Library as well as other web sites. IA is intended to increase the utility of online learning resources by allowing teachers to make these existing materials relevant to their students and school setting. With the template interface, you choose the background color and graphic icon and, in a text box, add content linking to resources assembled in folders. The resulting web page can be either publicly viewed or password protected so that only your students can view it.

IA was developed for teachers to use with their students, but students can also use it to create projects. Step-by-step directions for developing lessons are available. An IA Project Showcase provides access to recently published pages. You can browse and search IA lessons using author, grade level, and subject.

Project Examples
Polar Geography
http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:6653
Science Careers
http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:3933
Weather
http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:15
Probability
http://ia.usu.edu/viewproject.php?project=ia:5748

FILAMENTALITY
http://www.filamentality.org/wired/fil/index.html
Filamentality, funded by AT&T, is a fill-in-the-blank tool that guides you through picking a topic, searching the web, gathering sites, and turning web resources into appropriate activities for your students. The goal of Filamentality is to make web-based learning more effective and efficient than wandering around on the Internet looking for “good stuff” and hoping for positive outcomes. Filamentality users can build five different kinds of web-based learning pages:

Hotlists: This format allows you to assemble collections of resources found on the web.
Scrapbooks: In this format, students dig through the collection of Hotlist resources and make a digital “scrapbook” on a topic. Students could be asked to organize the collection into a newsletter, presentation, collage, bulletin board, HyperStudio stack, or web page.
Treasure Hunts: The basic strategy is to find web pages that hold information that you feel is essential to understanding a topic. After you’ve gathered these links, you are then prompted by the Filamentality template to pose one key question for each web resource to which you’ve linked.
Subject Samplers: You can present a small number of web sites organized around a main topic. What makes this a particularly effective way to engage students is you’ve chosen web sites that offer something interesting to do, read, or see. Students are asked to respond to the web-based activities from a personal perspective.
WebQuests: Students are presented with a task, scenario, or problem to solve. All students begin by learning some common background knowledge, then they divide into groups. The students have a particular role, task, or perspective to master. They become experts on one aspect of a topic. When the roles come together, students must synthesize their learning by completing a summarizing act, such as emailing congressional representatives or presenting their interpretation to experts on the topic.

Hotlist Examples
Wild William’s Weather Hotlist
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listweatherwl.html
Algebra Made Easy: Internet Hotlist on Algebra
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/listalgebrasv.html
Scrapbook Examples
A Scrapbook on Weather and Temperature
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/scrapweatherbo.html
A Scrapbook on Fractions
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/scrapfractionfr.html
Subject Sampler Examples
Weather Sampler
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/samweatherdm.html
Geometry Scavenger Hunt Sampler
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/samgeometryge.html
Treasure Hunt Examples
On the Hunt for Weather
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/huntweatherzo.html
Journey to the Algebra Mines
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/huntalgebrams.html
WebQuest Examples
Weather WebQuest
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/webweatherka1.html
Fractions WebQuest
http://www.kn.att.com/wired/fil/pages/webfractioncv.html

TEACHERTUBE
http://www.teachertube.com
TeacherTube officially launched on March 6, 2007, with the goal of providing an online community for sharing instructional videos in an educationally focused, safe venue for teachers, schools, and home learners. The developers of TeacherTube wanted to provide anytime, anywhere professional development with teachers teaching teachers as well as a site where teachers can post videos designed for their students to view. Today the site has evolved to a place where students can upload videos they’ve made as part of school projects.

Users of TeacherTube, called community members, can:

Upload, tag and share videos
Upload support files such as activities, assessments, lesson plans, and video notes
Browse hundreds of videos uploaded by community members
Find, join and create video groups to connect with people who have similar interests
Customize the experience by subscribing to member videos, saving favorites, and creating playlists
Integrate TeacherTube videos on web sites using video embeds or APIs
Make videos public or private. Users can elect to broadcast their videos publicly or share them privately with those they invite

TeacherTube community members are encouraged to make constructive comments and use the rating system to show appreciation for videos of value to educators or learners. Users also have the ability to flag inappropriate videos. TeacherTube staff review flagged sites and will remove inappropriate posts. Users are urged to check their school’s policy before including students in videos. Copyright tips provide an overview of the copyright laws.

Video Examples
Mr. Duey Raps the Fractions
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=ebd7c1e1b7118af88edc
Abbott and Costello Maths Problem
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=93b89d8fbee5667d077f
USB Flash or Jump Drives to Share Drives Between Computers
http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=84cd13696974d780a32a

Copyright June 2008 - The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0733024. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

The concept of evaporation is generally understood by students in grades 5-8, but they may be unsure of the journey that a single drop of water takes from the sky to earth and back again. The National Science Education Standards stress that the process of condensation requires extensive observation and instruction if students are to really understand the water cycle.
We believe these three interactive sites will help your students visualize and understand the global water cycle.

Observe a Raindrop Traveling Through Various Paths of the Water Cycle
By clicking on arrows, students can move a raindrop from a cloud through different paths in the water cycle. The activity names the processes and supplies short definitions. Precipitation, transpiration, infiltration, runoff, and melting are among the processes represented.

Droplet and the Water Cycle
This fun and challenging interactive game is from the NASA Earth Science Enterprise For Kids Only web site. Using Flash animation, students control a droplet of water falling from the sky on its journey through a rainforest, into a river, and on to the ocean, while avoiding dangers, like butterflies and insects that are very thirsty.

The Water Cycle
Using this short module from the Environmental Protection Agency, students can learn about aquifers, transpiration, and condensation. This is a good web site for helping middle school students grasp the connections between different forms of water.

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We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back often for our newest posts or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org.

Middle school students often need to practice basic facts. The web sites listed below get the students thinking about the operations in a problem-solving way. In the first resource, the problem can have more than one solution, challenging students to practice their skills in reasoning and proof. A possible follow-up would be to have the students make their own problems, provide solutions, and share the problems and solutions with classmates.

Middle School Balanced Packet
This web site contains the techniques, tips, and secrets used by master teachers of mathematics. Tips for students, teachers and parents are included.

Learning to Multiply
Teachers share their methods for teaching multiplication facts.

Learning Multiplication Facts
Dr. Math of the Math Forum web site offers ideas on teaching multiplication.

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We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back often for our newest posts or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org.

The order of operations rules are important now in evaluating numerical expressions and later in the study of algebra. The featured resources offer explanations, examples of what goes wrong when the rules are misapplied, and problems to solve.

Amby’s Math Resources: Order of Operations
Check out this online tutorial offering a pre-test, practice exercises, and a post-test. It is especially handy as a quick review for students working independently.

Explaining Order of Operations
This online article explains the how and why for the simplification of numerical expressions.

Expression Evaluation
Here is information about applying the order of operations rules, as well as an online quiz with a practical application.

Matho 2
Try to win a bingo game while practicing simplifying numerical expressions.

Number Card
Students must correctly combine four numbers on a number card to form a target number.

Operation Order
This online game is a good practice tool because the correct solution is given when a wrong answer is entered. The easiest level involves addition and subtraction while the hardest level requires the use of all operations.

Order of Operations
This site features a clear explanation of the rules for the order of operations with examples. It offers several problems for students to solve, including one practical application.

Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally
Here is an explanation of the popular mnemonic with problems and a puzzle to solve.

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We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back often for our newest posts or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org.

Students need active learning experiences to understand measurement concepts and develop important skills. These resources provide opportunities for students to problem solve with hands-on and virtual measurements in real-world and online environments.

Fit by Design or Design to Fit
This applied mathematics lesson features hands-on activities supporting the NCTM Measurement Standard, and can be used to introduce middle school students to a bit of trigonometry. All that is needed are measurement tools — carpenter’s square, a piece of string, and a protractor.

The Global Sun Temperature Project
Bigger than hands-on, this is an annual real-world, international and interdisciplinary research project for students. Classes gather local data, post data online, and use the aggregated data to see how average daily temperatures and hours of sunlight relate to distance from the equator.

It Takes Ten
Students use metric units to estimate and measure weight, length, and volume, and to determine area.

Open-Ended Math Problems: Get Ready, Get Set
Select a month and scroll down to find open-ended measurement problems at three levels of difficulty. Students build mathematics understanding and see how mathematics is used in everyday life.

Pentagon Puzzles
This measurement lesson is one of 37 hands-on projects focused on mathematics. See http://www.math.nmsu.edu/~breakingaway/lessons.html for more lessons.

Popcorn Math
Here is a volume estimating activity for students to do on their own or with others.

Surface Area and Volume
Examine prisms from multiple views, adjust dimensions, rotate prisms, and see how dimension changes impact volume and surface area. Students can also calculate volume and surface area.

We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back often for our newest posts or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org.

“Words! Words! Words!” sang Eliza Doolittle in the musical My Fair Lady. “I’m so sick of words!” But students have to master the vocabulary of mathematics. This is especially difficult for those learning a new language even as they struggle with new mathematics vocabulary. The first two resources deal with mathematical terms themselves, while the other three offer classroom activities in Spanish and English.

A Maths Dictionary for Kids
This animated, interactive mathematics dictionary for kids explains over 500 common mathematical terms in simple language. Each term is illustrated and, often, accompanied by an interactive applet that makes visual and immediate the definition of the term.

Terms and Formulas from Beginning Algebra to Calculus
This interactive mathematics dictionary offers many terms and formulas appropriate for older middle school students. The illustrations, diagrams, and applets help define the terms every bit as much as the text does.

Biblioteca Nacional de Manipuladores Virtuales
This is the Spanish equivalent of the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. Together they offer interactive, web-based virtual manipulatives, mostly in the form of Java applets, for mathematics instruction. On any page, users can easily switch between English and Spanish by using a drop-down menu.

Multicultural Math Fair
Here are ten activities used successfully in a math fair at Frisbie Middle School in Rialto, California. Each activity is available in English and Spanish. Links connect the teacher to information on setting up a fair and locating software.

Who Wants Pizza?/Quien Quiere Pizza?
A fun way to learn about fractions in English and in Spanish. Four activities, each followed by practice exercises, lead students to explore the basic definition of fractions and addition with fractions.

We Need Your Help

We want and need your ideas, suggestions, and observations. What would you like to know more about? What questions have your students asked? We invite you to share with us and other readers by posting your comments. Please check back often for our newest posts or download the RSS feed for this blog. You can also request email notification when new content is posted (see right navigation bar).

Let us know what you think and tell us how we can serve you better. We want your feedback on all of the NSDL Middle School Portal publications. Email us at msp@msteacher.org.