Okay, so you can tell by the title of this blog post I’m a biologist and not a chemist. (Chemistry teachers, please don’t send me hate mail!) Honestly, I don’t love chemistry and I don’t love teaching it. BUT, I realize how important it is for students to understand biochemistry
Living? Nonliving? Dormant? Dead? Even though teaching living vs. nonliving seems very elementary, you’d be surprised by how often high school students get confused when you throw examples at them. Fossils? Fire? Slime mold? How can we test if they are alive or not? Teaching characteristics of life is a
This is one lab that you don’t want to miss! It’s easy, the materials are inexpensive (you probably already have them at home), and it ties together multiple concepts. Winner! In this lab, students will analyze a pedigree of a fictitious family. In the introduction, students read that “Jon and
This lab is one of my top sellers in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. It is easy to set up and doesn’t require a lot of materials. However, I frequently get questions about the lab so I’m hoping this blog post will be useful to those teachers out there who
Need a great inquiry lab? This soda lab is FUN! And I know what you are thinking…. “what a mess it must be!” But I’ve done this lab multiple times, and never had a spill. Students will get 3 types of soda, and will measure which brand has the greatest
pH…. one of those chemistry topics that us biology teachers get to teach. In biology I don’t make my students calculate pH and pOH values, but they need to understand what pH is and why maintaining a healthy pH in your body is so important. You may love biochemistry, or
Is food chains up next in your curriculum? Most students learn food chains in the elementary grades, so how do you make it interesting and rigorous at the secondary level? Here are some great options: 1. In this interactive from the BBC, students go through 3 levels and identify food chains
It’s the beginning of the year, and chances are you are starting off teaching or reviewing the scientific method. If you’ve looked around on the internet for scientific method labs, you will notice that the majority are not biology related. Don’t get me wrong- building paper airplanes, measuring bubbles, and
Natural selection is one of my favorite topics to teach. Students enter the classroom with prior misconceptions and it’s fun to have students figure out what natural selection and evolution really mean. Here is a list of my favorite natural selection and evolution activities: 1. Battle of the Beaks– This
It’s Summer! Time to keep those little hands busy The time we get to sleep in and relax (a little….) As a science teacher I’ve had multiple friends ask me the same question: “What science activities can I do with my kids over the summer?” I remember growing up over
