Science, Education, and Science Education

classroom applications

Archive for the ‘In Class’ Category

January 15th, 2022 by Luann

Learning Anatomy through Collaboration, Part 2

Body With Muscles, anterior side

Students created life-size body drawings and added muscles.

Four of our 14 anatomy students plan a health-related career.

Another student plans to study forensics.

The remaining 9 have no concrete plans for what they will do in 5 months, after graduation.

We needed a helpful way to learn about muscles. Sure, we could use drawings and label them after a lecture, and memorize names, origins, insertions, actions, and innervation, quiz one another and then take quizzes and get grades.

Ugh.

Instead, we used our life-size human drawings to learn about muscles.

Our learning progressed like this:

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September 6th, 2021 by Luann

Learning Anatomy through Collaboration, Part 1

We’ve been away from one another for far too long.

Talking over Zoom, email, feedback and peer edits on documents and drawings can only go so far.

Mink Intestines in Anatomy

Mink dissection – look at those intestines!

Most of the students in this Anatomy and Physiology class in our small rural school have been together for years, some since kindergarten. Some are related; in fact, this class of 14 students has two sets of twins.

To begin the year, we use the classic “Draw Yourself” lab, in which students pair up and one student traces the body outline of the second student on a large piece of posted paper. Students then label regions of the body, quadrants of the abdomen, and directional terms used for describing the body – anterior, posterior, dorsal, ventral, sagittal, for example.

The benefits of this work, as opposed to me lecturing and students memorizing:

  1. Students get acquainted, or re-acquainted, with one another.
  2. Students are actively working, that is, moving around and acquiring a kinesthetic introduction of the human body and the terms they will be using all year.
  3. While working on their creation, students see the terms in print, read the terms aloud, hear others say the terms, and write the terms. Over, and over.
  4. Students visit other groups to ask questions, give suggestions, and get ideas for their own work.
  5. And, importantly, students learn how others learn.

We will use these large paper bodies over and over, throughout the year.  Stay tuned.

May 8th, 2021 by Luann

End of Year Science Scavenger Hunts

A few decades ago, I wrote a scavenger hunt for my AP Chem students to do After The Test.                                                                                                      It’s gone through many iterations, and has been modified for a general chemistry class. A Biology version soon followed. It’s a great end-of-the-year activity as students must apply what they’ve learned all year and make connections among several concepts. The hunt can be done as an out of class assignment, or time in class can be given for students to plan the items they will use and write the index cards. I’ve had students work alone, in pairs, and in groups or 3.

Here’s how it works:

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January 29th, 2018 by Luann

In the Classroom: Teachers Sharing Our Work

I tweeted a few weeks ago, mentioning my frustration that a well known site on which you can save your favorite images had become nothing more than a re-direct to a site on which teachers sell their work. A number of other teachers jumped into the conversation, offering up the websites on which their own work could be downloaded for free. Many items are editable. All that is asked is that you follow their Creative Commons or other copyright requests.

On the sites below, you won’t find un-editable but cute worksheets that can be easily used as filler. You won’t find un-editable cut-and-paste scrapbooking-type activities that usually generate an attractive product with little likelihood of students engaging in any depth. You WILL find the best work of accomplished, practicing classroom teachers who continually update their lessons.

UPDATED 5/16/2020

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September 23rd, 2014 by Luann

Lab Clean-up

This is the year I organize the lab.

Teaching kids to work efficiently and keep their work area neat is pretty intuitive. Washing glassware, however, is not. I’ve outfitted every station with a small plastic bin that contains a sponge, a towel, and a spray bottle of table cleaner provided by the custodial staff. There’s nothing to clean glassware. So, I added a medium-sized test tube brush to the can in each cupboard, and placed a salt shaker (2/$1 at The Dollar Store) filled with Alconox in each bin:

Alconox

Alconox

Alconox is my glassware-cleaning detergent of choice, when a cleaner is needed. Students usually wash their own glassware at their lab benches. They will dump a handful of Alconox in one beaker when only a sprinkle is needed. The shakers are about 12 cm tall, plastic, easy to refill, and yes, they are color-coded to match the table color scheme.

Update, November 24: Working quite well.

March 1st, 2014 by Luann

Instead of an instructional coach…

Here’s what I’d like to have instead of an instructional coach:

instead

Instead of a coach…. an assistant*.

Yup.  That’s right.

I want an assistant. Not actually an assistant for demos and teaching, although that could work. I want more of a, well,  lab manager.

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June 23rd, 2013 by Luann

The Paper Mill Project 2013

This post might well be titled “Adventures in Project-Based Learning.”

Students Working with Sludge

Sludge

You have to start somewhere.

It was an experience in jumping in feet first, and fortunately, also an experience in collaborative problem-solving. Based on the student excitement level, the student-initiated collaboration, and the chemistry-rich discussions involved, it was also a very successful experience.

I’ve learned that students find a final project more relevant than just a final exam. I’ve used either or both together as a final assessment.  One favorite in the past has been the scavenger hunt. Most of my Chemistry kiddos had done the biology version last year, so I wanted to provide them with a different experience in Chemistry.

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March 6th, 2013 by Luann

Student Guest Post: New Elemental Discoveries Strike A Chord with Chemists

This post is the college admissions essay written by an amazing (and now former)  AP Chemistry student, Cody Beam.  UPDATE: Cody graduated from Tulane in 2017 with Bachelor of Science degrees in Chemical Engineering and 2 other areas. Cody is now part way through a PhD program in materials science engineering. 

Periodic Table of Band

Periodic Table of Band

                   I’m pretty sure Cody’s other intellectual abilities would have assured not only acceptance but the free ride they received. Cody shared this essay with me, and I loved it so much that I asked, and Cody granted, permission, for me to share it here.

Spectacular new advances have been made in the periodic table in the past couple of months. A grand total of 34 new elements have been discovered in the most unlikely of places: high school band rooms. A new alkali metal (Directorium, 119) and an alkaline earth metal (Band Geekium, 120) are the most prominent of the new discoveries followed by 32 others which form the Instruminide Series. Research is underway to determine the properties and habits of these elements, as well as why they had not been discovered before, and while there is still much to learn, what has been deciphered of these mysterious elemental additions is fascinating.

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February 18th, 2013 by Luann

Creativity and Science, Part 3

From Learning and the Brain Conference, Day 2, Friday.

Souls of Pe bring water for purification.

It’s pretty clear to me, perhaps because I’m looking for it, that however one views creativity, one has to know something to be creative in a productive sense. Rigorous content is part of most models of PBL and creativity models. I’m not sure this is obvious to everyone, though. I’ve always known that before kids can create productively, they have to know something. Granted, some world problems appear to be solvable on the surface by 6th graders playing with plastic cups and sand models of water purification systems, and 6th graders should play with these things. At some point, however, rigor and expectations need to stretch. How can this be done? Read the rest of this entry »

February 14th, 2013 by Luann

Creativity and Science, Part 1

I’m leaving tomorrow to attend Learning and the Brain’s Educating for Creative Minds conference.

I’ve been creative before.  Several of my quilts were chosen for an exhibit at an art museum

Brain

in Ohio. I’ve been creative in my classroom for years. It takes a great deal of creativity to keep teenagers engaged as they learn an abstract subject such as chemistry. I’ve created lessons, labs, projects, presentations, lab stations, grant proposals, graphics, models, rubrics, assessments, and a few bazillion things I’ve already forgotten about. Oh, and a dissertation, the production of which is fundamental to my question: What does it mean to be creative in science?

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