Teaching Resources from the California Academy of Sciences

The online resources offered by the California Academy of Sciences have been valuable to me as a science teacher. Recently I took a trip to San Francisco and visited the museum with my family. We really enjoyed the exhibits, and it seemed like a wonderful place to bring students on a field trip. If you live in the Bay Area or are ever visiting, it's worth a trip!

The California Academy of Sciences is a sizable science museum that houses impressive exhibits on four floors. It's topped with a living roof covered in native plants that attract and feed local pollinators.

There were many exhibits in the museum that we enjoyed. Some of the highlights were the aquarium, the planetarium show, and a living rainforest exhibit. 

The aquarium presented marine ecosystems from around the world though we especially enjoyed viewing the large tank with kelp, sea anemones, and fish found on the California coast.

As we entered the rainforest exhibit, we immediately felt the increase in temperature and humidity. The exhibit is filled with tropical plants, and you can see butterflies fluttering close by.

I have a love of rocks and minerals and was impressed by their collection, which was beautiful to view. 

Tickets to the California Academy of Sciences can be a little pricey, but as of the writing of this blogpost, San Francisco school groups get free admission, and the ticket price is reduced for other school groups.

Before ever visiting the museum itself, I used multiple online teaching resources from the California Academy of Sciences with my middle school students. I always found the  resources, which include video simulations and short films, to be of a very high quality. 

One of my favorite resources is a short video simulation depicting a kelp forest food web that teaches students how sea otters, sea urchins, kelp, and other ocean life are connected to one another and to the sun. This video could be used to help teach standards related to ecology, particularly NGSS standard MS-LS2-3: Develop a model to describe the cycling of matter and flow of energy among living and nonliving parts of an ecosystem. Guiding questions to ask students are provided. Here is a link to the video:

Take a Virtual Dive in a Kelp Forest

Another video I like is a simulation of photosynthesis viewed from inside a leaf. This video is a good resource for teaching NGSS standard MS-LS1-6: Construct a scientific explanation based on evidence for the role of photosynthesis in the cycling of matter and flow of energy into and out of organisms. Here's a link to the video:

Travel Deep Inside a Leaf

The California Academy of Sciences has multiple teacher resources that include lesson plans, videos, and short films available online at no cost. These resources along with information on field trips and professional development can be found here:

California Academy of Sciences Educator Resources

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Students Give Back with Service Learning

Service learning experiences can get students out of the classroom and involved in parts of their community they don't typically interact with. Students gain new knowledge and a feeling of purpose as they learn how they can have a positive impact on their world.  

Involving students in service learning can be as simple as arranging times for older students to work with younger students as reading buddies or to do art projects together.

When I taught service learning as a class, my middle school students met with their K-2 reading buddies once a week for about 20 minutes per grade. This worked with our school schedule though longer blocks of times are nice, too. Sometimes the middle schoolers met up with their buddies during recess. The middle school students had a blast playing with the younger kids! The K-2 students always looked forward to seeing their older buddies.

Another nice way to help students serve while interacting with people of different ages is to visit assisted living facilities. We were lucky to have several of these homes within walking distance of the school. One year the class interviewed an elder couple and learned that they had met and married fairly recently. Students collected their life stories and used them to create a play that they performed. The couple had some great stories to tell, so this made for a very entertaining play! 

On other occasions, students spent time at the assisted living facility playing board games with residents. One day, a student decided to bring along his new virtual reality headset for the elders to try.

As you can imagine, both the elders and students benefitted from this time spent together.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, when visiting the assisted living facility was not possible, middle school students involved our entire K-8 school in creating cards for residents of assisted living facilities and nursing homes in our area. Students made cards for hundreds of elders in their community.

Also within the school's neighborhood is a community garden, and students helped out there by doing some weeding.

While working in the community garden, students had opportunities to try different herbs. Lemon sorrel was the most popular, and some ventured to try nasturtium flowers.

By trying different kinds of service learning, students had the opportunity to discover activities that they could enjoy while giving back to their community.

If you would like to read about how students gain voice and empowerment through their involvement in student council, follow this link to an earlier post on this topic:

Student Government

If you are interested in an opportunity to help collect data on pollinator populations, follow this link:

Get Outdoors with Citizen Science! The Great Sunflower Project

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