Because of the season, October is the perfect time to study
the skeleton. Several years ago, I attended a session at the
NSTA conference that suggested using cheap bones from the Halloween store for a
forensic activity. I decided to use
them, but in a different way. I
purchased these bones from a catalog, because it wasn’t fall. The entire Bag O Bones ran me around
$20.00.
My students are instructed to choose a Halloween bone and identify the quality of its anatomical features. Students work in a small group for this, and present their findings in a short informal presentation at the end of class. They give the bone a grade and justify why they graded it in this way.
Students in the past have really liked this lesson, and were
very engaged in the detail of their specimen.
It ties in the bone markings we learned the day before and is a nice
precursor to working with the real disarticulated skeleton in class next week. This also meets the goal of having students justify and share their work with others.
Another class success.
