September 25, 2006.
What a day to be outdoors! For the past few weeks, we’ve gotten some scattered cloudy or rainy days and everyone kept saying, summer’s over, the rain is coming, bla bla bla. Well today topped out at 85 degrees and the sun beat down heartily with no clouds in sight. [...]
Open or close class using these teaching manipulatives. I have one set of plant cell mitosis cards and another set of animal cell mitosis. Students get to use their brains and their hands when they practice putting the steps of mitosis in order. You can use both sets together to demonstrate similarities [...]
In a place like Massachusetts, seasonal changes are rather noticeable. However, it seems as if many students go right through high school without spending some time investigating these changes. Why is winter so different from summer? Where do all the bugs go? Why do birds migrate? What happens to the [...]
Teaching students how to use a microscope is an essential component of any high school biology class. I was surprised at how many of my 9th graders had never used one before, so I had to go back to basics to develop introductory activities for them. My goal was to have my students [...]
September 16, 2006.
Huckleberries ripe for the picking, enormous slugs, steep inclines, fungi of all shapes and sizes and a quaint firetower highlighted the day’s hike. We set out from the Cold Creek trailhead at about 10:45. The trail rose steeply right from the get-go, so we took our time ascending. Many conversations [...]
I like to use hands-on opening activities several times per week. This organelle review activity is a perfect way to start the class after we’ve been studying cell parts.
What you get is a graphic organizer with all the parts of the cell and their related functions, which the students manipulate in the graphic organizer [...]
When teaching diffusion and osmosis, there are a variety of labs available that demonstrate these processes. This lab uses a shell-less egg to show how water passively moves across a membrane. It is messy, and requires delicate egg-handling, but it illustrates the point well. The egg shrinks in syrup (hypertonic) and swells [...]
As a high school teacher, I struggled with how to incorporate lecture into class. Learning science involves a great deal of information that needs to be disseminated in an efficient and effective way. Inquiry is nice, but it has its limits. The old-fashioned lecture has a necessary role in today’s science classes. [...]
Try this project for a change of pace. After learning about the heart from the book, have your students make a massive model, walk the path of blood flow in the model, work in teams, communicate their knowledge orally and write about their experience.
Download the project.
Download the quiz.
And, don’t forget to visit the [...]
This creative research project will engage your students in genetics topics that are relevant to today’s society. You will explore stem cells, cloning, genetic disease, DNA fingerprinting, and much more as your students find ways to communicate these important topics to a general audience. After all the hard work, sit back and watch your students [...]