Bill Nye Science Videos

The Bill Nye Television Show Lesson is one of the most anticipated lessons of the year by the students and me. The premise is that Bill Nye is ill and the television production crew is scrambling around trying to find someone to fill in and do a great job teaching the science topic. The students are challenged to fill his shoes and become the next Bill Nye. It is a culminating project where the students are placed into groups and obtain a detailed rubric. Essentially, the students are to choose a topic/standard from the science checklist that they learned about this year. Once they have chosen a topic, they have to follow a rubric with detailed guidelines. Day 1--Formulate groups of 3-4 people. On the same day, the groups need to go over the Science checklist and agree upon a topic in order to create the movie. This is where I can see right away if the group is even going to work based on how they work together and try to compromise or not. Then, for the next three days, they are to complete research. The groups are given a research paper to fill out. They can use books, the Internet, papers from their files kept in class, and any other research. The groups can separate the work and will do equal parts. The will also cite their references and have already been taught how to do this. After the research, the students in each group are given evaluation forms to fill out for themselves and their group members. This keeps everyone on track and holds hem accountable. The next two days are devoted to developing a script. Each member must help with creating a script, rehearse, and memorize so that it is fluid and like a Bill Nye movie. When they are done with the script, they need to use the Flip Video Camera and create the 5-10 minute video on their Science topic. They are to use props, A Consider the Following segment, as well as a Did You Know segment. The students have two days to develop and shoot their movie. Overall time it takes to complete this video project is 6 days. Finally, the students from each group will show their videos and prove to us that Bill Nye can retire because they can take over. After all videos are show, we will write a reflection paper based on the overall project, what the students liked, disliked, as well as things they would do differently and what they learned from this experience and other groups. Finally, in the following school year, I can show these videos as a "Hook" before I introduce the actual topic. For example, before I teach the topic "Sound", a perfect "Hook" would be to show the video to grab the students' attention and lead them into this new topic. I have taught this lesson for two years and it has been the most talked about and enjoyed by all. It is a great learning experience that incorporates so many standards in many different content areas. I love teaching this lesson and seeing the kids gain from this experience