My Favorite FREE Resource for Teaching Science
The first teaching job I had didn’t have a lot of resources for labs. I was 22 and didn’t know what I know now so it’s possible there were resources I didn’t know about. Regardless of the reality, the result was the same. Most of the labs we did were funded by my credit card. So you can imagine how excited I was to start being able to do virtual labs when it was announced before my second year of teaching that the district was going one to one (every student got a refurbished macbook air).
I was so excited about all of the possibilities. My hopes were soon dashed when the vast majority of virtual labs required a purchase. Unfortunately, it wasn’t until about four years later during my time outside of the K12 classroom that I stumbled upon what soon became one of my favorite resources.
I was teaching Life Science for Middle Grades Teachers at UGA. It was a hybrid course in Fall 2020 and the majority of my students understandably chose to participate virtually. I was desperate for a way for students to be able to participate in labs and inquiry despite our varied locations. During my search, I found The Concord Consortium.
Funded by the National Science Foundation, The Concord Consortium is a database of FREE resources and simulations for use from elementary through university education. Each resource is tagged based on the grade level audience it is targeted AND the NGSS standard, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts. Resources span across STEM courses.
As a teacher, you can create a class for students to join, assign students resources, and keep track of their progress. Most of the resources are able to be completed online, but a few that were made using JAVA must be downloaded. The Concord Consortium has also bundled some of the resources together as a collection. For example, if you’re a math teacher that wants to get students involved in R you might check out the Math Modeling with R collection. If your students struggle with graphs you might be interested in the Smart Graphs or Graph Literacy Collections. Environmental science teacher? You’ll probably enjoy the WATERS collection that will help you and your students plugin to the waterways in your area!
The resources give detailed instructions and you can see the estimated time for completion by previewing most of the resources. They encourage inquiry based learning and ask conceptual questions so you can gauge the depth of student understanding. The resources often illustrate the connection of the concepts to the real world. I cannot emphasize enough how useful I’ve found The Concord Consortium’s website!
I encourage you to try out the simulations available on learn.concord.org. If you do, I’d love to hear what you think!
Stay curious,
Dr. J
P.S. These are a few of my favorite resources from the Concord Consortium to use!
Geniventure: This is a longer resource. It is a game in which students help save an endangered dragon population while teaching and review genetics concepts!
Genetic Inheritance in Pea Plants: Inquiry based lesson on genotype and phenotype!
DNA to Proteins: Students view and investigate the structure of DNA, transcription, translations, and mutations.
