Icebreakers! August 31st, 2015
SMILE teachers, are you looking for ways to help your students get to know each other? Here is a list of icebreakers that you can do with your students at your club meetings.
Archives: August, 2015
2015 August Teacher’s Workshop August 25th, 2015
During the August SMILE teachers workshop we spent an entire day learning about Oregon’s geology, hazards, and preparedness. All of the lesson materials shared were connected to NGSS with a specific focus on Cross Cutting Concepts. Check out some of the fun activities:
- Landslide Hazards & Hazard Preparedness
- Mt Hood Volcanic Hazard Activity
- Spaghetti Quake Activity
- Making a Seismograph
- Earthquake Triangulation Activity
- Modeling Volcanic Processes
- Tsunamis
We also had special guests who shared resources related to geologic topics. Here are links to their websites:
During an elementary session, teachers learned about riparian systems and their importance to birds and other organisms and we built model ecosystems. Here are the lesson plans that support these concepts:
2015 Summer Teacher’s Workshop Bioenergy Activities August 10th, 2015
We will be holding the summer teacher’s workshop Aug 9-11. The bioenergy activities will focus on renewable energy. Bioenergy is a part of the complete renewable energy picture, but how do you choose which option makes the most sense. We will kick off the workshop by exploring best practices for engineering design projects, Designing Engineers Activity. Then, look at what it takes to power a house that is off the grid. We will use geographic information systems (GIS) to determine whether its makes sense to use Trees or Solar Panels for the renewable energy source. This will lead into design of the house to optimize solar panels and solar heating through the Solar City Activity. Finally, we will take a deep dive into optimizing solar photo-voltaic panels for maximum output with the Shocking Solar Activity. We hope to see you at the workshop.