Living? Nonliving? Dormant? Dead? Even though teaching living vs. nonliving seems very elementary, you'd be surprised by how often high school students get confused when you throw examples at them. It makes me think of this 90's "J-E-L-L-O it's alive!" commercial:

But in all seriousness....
Teaching characteristics of life is a great way to start off the year in biology. I like teaching it week 1 because it's more fun than the scientific method (which they should know by now anyway) and a great introduction to biology- the study of living things. Here are a few resources you can add to your teacher toolkit for your life unit:

• Check out this youtube clip that introduces characteristics of living things. Great to get them thinking!
• Great to catch their interest: sometimes called "sewer lice" or "dancing raisins" lab, this activity gets students thinking about what really makes things living or not. Download it free here from Flinn Scientific.
• Hatch some triops! I like having the discussion- are eggs alive? (You'd be surprised at the number of high school students that don't know the difference between eggs that hatch into chickens, and eggs that you eat). You can buy triops online, and I've also found them at our local science kids museum. Your students will love watching them hatch and swim around.
• Another fun question to throw at them- are seeds alive? Ask students if they think popcorn kernels are alive. If so, how could we test it? Your students will be amazed after a week once they have corn plants sprouting in their cups! (see picture below)
• Try my Characteristics of Life Lab. In this activity, students will be given a box of objects and have to classify them as living, nonliving, dormant, or dead. They will also need to find ways to test if they are living or not. For example, if they say a leaf is living, how can they prove it? I like doing this lab before I review the characteristics of life, because it allows students to try and come up with the list of characteristics on their own. You can check it out in my TpT store here.
• I also have a set of task cards in my TpT store, where students have to identify the 8 characteristics. This is a great follow up to your lesson and good review before a quiz. Check it out here.
  
• Here is a free lab where students test if yeast is alive or not.

I hope those are helpful! Any other great ways you teach the characteristics of life? Drop them in the comments!
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It's almost time for me to start planning out my first week of school (yes it's crazy, I go back end of July). When I first started teaching, I spent the first week reviewing the syllabus, class rules, and (duh duh duh duhhhhh) spent time reviewing all the lab safety procedures. It just felt like the responsible science teacher thing to do. What I soon realized is the students were just plain bored... or nervous about finding their next class.... or thinking about who has the same lunch period as them... but they were NOT memorizing all those nice lab safety rules I was so carefully explaining. They are also reviewing rules in almost every other class and the chances of them remembering what you said those first few days are slim.  So I decided to throw the "let's front-load all the rules that they will forget anyway" out the window and find more exciting activities for that first week.

I know some of you science teachers reading this are thinking "But I have to review rules the first week, because they need to sign a lab safety contract!" Yes, they do. (And if you don't have one handy, I recommend Flinn Science's contracts which you can download free here.) But is it really necessary the first few days? Here is my main argument on why you are wasting your time: Why are you teaching students to wear goggles and keep scalpels pointed down during dissections if you aren't actually getting to the dissection until April? Or why are you teaching them the proper way to carry and store a microscope when the microscopes don't come out of the cupboard until your cells unit in December? Students will just forget, and you will have to review the rules all over again anyway. Instead, wait until you get to the lab and then review the necessary rules. As far as the contract goes, have students read through it during class or at home with a parent and sign it. If they have any questions feel free to discuss them, but don't waste too much time on it. Here are a few ideas to do instead:

• Do a fun lab that doesn't have hazardous materials. For biology, a great lab to start with is a characteristics of life lab, or have them plant popcorn kernels and see if they grow (even high school students will be amazed by this simple little kernel.... trust me).
• Find a fun activity where you can get to know your students better. Maybe it is a "find someone who" activity, fun icebreakers, or a questionnaire, but I've found that students really appreciate it when you get to know them on a personal level.
• Set up interactive notebooks. If you have a team of teachers that teach the same subject as you, make sure you set them up the same way in case students get the inevitable schedule change.
• If you teach biology, bring in some living organisms (such as pill bugs or meal worms) and have students look at them under the stereoscopes.
• Another fun non-hazardous lab is the firework milk lab. Here is a video showing the lab and you can also find the worksheet in my TpT store.
• Find a memory/perception activity from this website or show this Monkey Business Illusion video. A lot of the time science is based on observations, but how good are we at actually making those observations?
• For younger grades, you might enjoy this freebie demo from my store. All you need is a 2L bottle, water, and tape. Easy!
• If you teach high school, don't spend too much time on the scientific method. They should already know it! Instead, focus more on the nature of science. Here is a great freebie from Utah Root's store about identifying bias and "how to spot bad science."

Long story short: front-loading material too early is a waste of your time. Have fun the first week! Get your students excited about science! (because let's face it, we teach the best content area!)

As much as we would love to have our lessons end 30 seconds before the bell rings, it rarely happens. Even if it does work out perfectly in 1st hour, 2nd hour is a completely different group of students and the lesson might require more or less time. It sometimes happens that the lesson is over and I still have 5 minutes left of class. It drives me crazy when students try and wait by the door! If you are a science teacher, here is a great idea to fill those last 5 minutes.

There is a show on science channel called Outrageous Acts of Science. During the show they show video clips and have scientists explain the science behind the video. The videos are all about 2 minutes long and fun for students to watch. Go to youtube.com and type in "Outrageous Acts of Science" in the search bar. You will get a ton of results. Pick out a few that are interesting. Then, head over to keepvid.com and copy the youtube URL into the keepvid site. I like this website because it allows you to download youtube videos and save them to your computer. That way you don't have to worry about commercials or streaming/buffering issues.

Another fun youtube channel is from Steve Spangler and is called "Sick Science." Click here to view the youtube channel. It shows simple science experiments and allows the students to brainstorm why they happened. It is great to have students discuss why they think something is happening and not just have it explained to them.

If you have some of these videos already picked out and ready to go, it will save you time later. I think you will find these clips are way more valuable than the students trying to sit on their phones or wait by the door. Any other ideas you use for those last 5 minutes? Drop them in the comments!
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