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Secondary Teacher Labor Day Blog Hop


What will you be doing on Labor Day?

Teachers in my district are in their 4th week of school already.  It is time for a break!  I am teaming up with a fantastic group of middle and high school teachers to participate in the Labor Day Labor Saving Products for Teachers blog hop.   Here is the idea behind this secondary blog hop.  We want you to have a restful Labor Day, so each of us is featuring a "no prep required" product or lesson.  We have already done the work so you don't have to!

My friend, Tammy of Teaching FSL, made the button above.  She is Canadian, thus the spelling of "labour."

I debated what product to feature.  I finally decided that I could not choose just one product.  So I have decided to feature one free product and one paid product.  Let's go with the freebie first.  

I would think that almost every science teacher will mention the scientific method during the first week of their class.  

Be sure to grab my FREE Scientific Method PowerPoint.  It has 26 slides and comes with a set of notes for the teacher, and an outline for the student.  The student will fill in the outline as the lesson is being taught.  This lesson goes behind just listing the steps to the scientific method. Students will be taught how to practice and apply the scientific method to a question or problem.


It doesn't get more labor-saving than this!  Simply download this freebie, print the handouts, and you are all set to go.


Another labor-saving product that I would like to feature is my Cell Organelle Mix-Match Game.  It comes with 25 organelle cards and 112 answer/description cards.  Students have to match up the answers to the correct organelle.

The beauty of this product is that it can be used with a WIDE variety of grade levels and ability levels.  The answer cards range in difficulty from easy to hard.  You simply select the answer cards that are best suited for your students.  This game can be used with beginning life science students all the way to AP biology students.






You can be ready to use this with your class in a matter of minutes.  Simply print, cut, laminate (if you want to be fancy!), and distribute to your class. The kids will love it and you will love how much they learn!
Happy Labor Day!


Ecology Warm Ups, Bell Ringers, or Interactive Notebook Pages

Click on image to view this product in my TpT store.

You've been asking for them.....
..... and here they are!

Ecology Warm Ups and Bell Ringers



Thank you for your patience as I completed this set.  I kinda got all wrapped up in this.  Just when I thought I was finished, I would think of something else I wanted to include.  So it kept growing and growing until it ended up being 80 student pages, 80 pages of teacher answer keys, a 6-page teacher guide, a template for creating cover pages for your interactive notebooks, and a template for creating your own warm up / bell ringer!  WHEW!!

In case you don't already know, this is the third set of warm ups / bell ringers that I have created.  The first set was "Introduction to Science," and the second set was "Cell Structure, Function, and Physiology."  There are two previous blog posts detailing each of these.  You can read the previous blog posts here and here.

All of the student pages look like this.  The pages are printed landscape style and each activity is 1/2 page.  Two identical warm-ups are printed per page in order to conserve paper. 



In this time saving classroom management strategy, all you have to do is print the pages and cut them in half.







A wide variety of skills and question types are used throughout the student pages.  Many of the activities require the student to draw, color, diagram or graph, while other pages are more traditional and require the student to explain, define, compare or analyze.





How can these pages be used?
  • Warm Ups or Bell Ringers
  • Exit Slips
  • Additions to Interactive Notebooks
  • Homework Assignments
  • Tutoring and Review
  • Completed notebook is perfect for semester exam review. 


These half-page activities can be collected and quickly graded, or you might want to have your students keep a daily warm-up notebook.  The warm-ups will make excellent additions to your interactive notebooks.  An added benefit is that the completed warm-up notebook makes an excellent review for the semester exam!

The topic is ecology.  It is such a HUGE topic that I broke it up into 6 categories.  Each category has between 9 and 18 student pages.  Each has been saved individually so that you can print only the ones you want to use.

Unit 3 Ecology includes warm ups for the following categories: 
(1) Introduction to Ecology, (2) Population Ecology, (3) Community Ecology, (4) Energy Flow and the Recycling of Matter, (5) Biomes, and (6) Humans and the Environment

Introduction to Ecology (12 pages):
·    Introduction to Ecology
·    Today’s Environment
·    Graph the Data 1
·    Graph the Data 2
·    What Affects Climate?
·    The Ozone Layer
·    The Greenhouse Effect
·    Levels of Ecological Organization I
·    Levels of Ecological Organization II
·    Biotic and Abiotic Factors
·    Habitat and Niche
·    Thinking Critically About Ecology

Population Ecology Titles (14 pages):
·    What is a population?
·    Dispersion Patterns
·    Survivorship Curves (Patterns of Mortality)
·    Life History
·    Introduction to Population Growth
·    Exponential Growth
·    Carrying Capacity
·    Logistic Growth
·    Limits to Growth
·    Density Dependent Factors
·    Density Independent Factors
·    Human Population Growth
·    Age Structure Diagrams
·    Thinking Critically About Populations

Community Ecology Titles (11 pages):
·    Community Interactions
·    Competition
·    Predation
·    Parasitism
·    Symbiosis
·    Name That Relationship!
·    Properties of Communities
·    Disturbances
·    Succession Part 1
·    Succession Part 2
·    Thinking Critically About Communities

Energy Flow and the Recycling of Matter Titles (16 pages):
·    Introduction to Energy Flow and Matter Recycling
·    Feeding Relationships
·    Food Chains
·    Productivity
·    Ecological Pyramids 1
·    Ecological Pyramids 2
·    Matter and Energy Cycles
·    The Water Cycle
·    Water Cycle Drawing
·    The Carbon Cycle
·    Carbon Cycle Drawing
·    The Nitrogen Cycle
·    Nitrogen Cycle Drawing
·    Nitrogen Cycle Summary
·    Phosphorus Cycle
·    Thinking Critically About Energy Flow and Matter Recycling

Biomes Titles (18 pages):
·    Introduction to Biomes
·    Tropical Rain Forest
·    Temperate Deciduous Forest
·    Savanna
·    Desert
·    Temperate Grassland
·    Chaparral (Woodland, Shrubland)
·    Taiga (Boreal Forest)
·    Tundra
·    Name That Biome!
·    Marine Ecosystems
·    Ocean Zones 1
·    Ocean Zones 2
·    Ocean Zones 3
·    Hydrothermal Vents
·    Estuaries
·    Freshwater Ecosystems
•  Thinking Critically About Biomes


Humans and the Environment Titles (9 pages):
·    Humans in the Biosphere
·    Resources
·    Forest Resources
·    Air Resources
·    Fisheries and Water Resources
·    The Ozone Layer
·    Carbon Dioxide Levels
·    The Biodiversity Crisis
·    Thinking Critically About Humans and the Environment

More warm ups have been included than can be used for this unit.  This gives you the flexibility of choosing which topics are most important to you and your students.

The idea of using warm ups or bell ringers is one that has worked well for me. I love that my students start working immediately upon entering my classroom, and that it give me a few minutes to get organized while the students are working.  

Thanks for making it to the end of this really long blog post.  I hope you are having a wonderful school year!

Links to warm up products:
Introduction to Science
Cell Structure, Function, and Physiology
Ecology