The free lesson planning resources that Education Dive shared last week turned out to be so popular that we decided to assemble a STEM-specific list as well. The Internet can be a gold mine for teachers across all subjects and grade levels, but today we are focused on math and science teachers in search of free activities and materials to enrich their classes and save a little time.
Whether you're looking for innovative ideas on how to demonstrate difficult mathematical concepts or excite your students with low-cost lab experiments, we've compiled a list with some of the best free resources for math and science classrooms. Take a look, and let us know via email if you think we should add anything!
Part of the Verizon Foundation's education resource platform, Thinkfinity, Illuminations was developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics to provide lesson plans and classroom activities for math teachers everywhere.
2. MATH GOODIES
The Math Goodies site, created by former math and computer science teacher Mrs. Glosser, offers free instructional material and classroom activities for grades 3-9.
3. CENTRE FOR INNOVATION IN MATHEMATICS TEACHING
Created and hosted by the University of Plymouth in England, the Centre for Innovation in Mathematics Teaching (CIMT) provides curriculums, lesson plans, classroom activities and testing resources. All of the material is free but portions of it are only accessible with a password, which you can apply for on the site.
4. MATH-AIDS
Math-Aids is a free resource with math worksheets for K-8 grade levels.
5. ACTIVE TEACH
Active Teach is an interactive "activity book" for math and science classes. The engaging real-world applications for math and science lessons are based on the London 2012 Olympic Games
Tom Reardon's website contains a glut of Texas Instruments (TI) graphing calculator activities and files for both the older TI calculators (TI-73/83/84/89/92) and the new TI-Nspires.
Biology Corner is a resource site with notes, questions, activities and lots of worksheets for science teacher. It's mostly biology, but there is also some anatomy and physics.
8. BIOED ONLINE
Free lessons, labs, slides and presentations for biology teachers from the Baylor College of Medicine.
9. NANCY CLARK'S AWESOME SCIENCE TEACHER RESOURCES
Nancy Clark, a teaching veteran of 25 years, compiled a list of her most effective resources. Activities, labs, lessons and links for biology and chemistry teachers.
10. MISTER GUCH
Ian Guch, a high school chemistry teacher, has a website where he uploads free worksheets, homework assignments, labs and lessons. Even better, Mr. Guch has begun writing his own textbook in response to the "usually lousy" chemistry textbooks he has to teach out of.
11. CHALKBORED
Free high school chemistry lessons in the form of powerpoints, labs and worksheets. The lesson plans specifically reference the Nelson Chemistry textbooks, although the maker of Chalkbored claims that any standard high school chemistry textbook will work in its stead.
Although Creative Chemistry is designed for UK educators, teachers can quickly look and find there are many chemistry worksheets and classroom activities that are useful and engaging, regardless of which country they are taught in.
13. ROYAL SOCIETY OF CHEMISTRY
The Royal Society of Chemistry is another UK-oriented site with an abundance of resources for any chemistry teacher. There are experiments, quizzes, tutorials, handouts and presentations.
14. TAP
TAP, an acronym for Teaching Advanced Physics, is aimed at teachers who teach students aged 16-19. A resource with demonstrations, activities, definitions and questions to help students understand physics concepts.
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