Science Take Out Lab Kits - Life Support for a Developing Baby

If you haven't tried Science Take-Out's lab kits you're missing out.

(No, I have not been compensated in any way - I just love their labs!)


Today we used the Life Support for a Developing Baby lab kit, and it's both really engaging and full of information.  It reinforces the idea that red blood cells do not diffuse across the membrane, but alcohol and viruses can cross and affect the baby.








Students build a model of the placenta from dialysis tubing and a cup of warm water.  Substances diffuse across for 15 minutes while students analyze charts and build a puzzle of the baby-placenta-blood supply to reinforce their understanding of the anatomy.




The chemical tests screen for alcohol and a virus in the baby's blood, and students see a dramatic result, comparing it to what birth defects may be caused during different stages of fetal development shown in the chart provided.

I think it's a great way to tie in the anatomy & physiology with the students' future real lives.  It's always nice to get in a health lesson (Fetal Alcohol System) alongside the required science.  

I also like to combine this lesson with the Human Fetal Growth lab I purchased from Teachers Pay Teachers.  It has students measure and graph fetal growth in length and graph mass values for fetal development as well.

If you're interested in seeing MY teachers pay teachers store - check out Carrie's Chemistry and Anatomy for my own lessons.

What do you do with Science models?

I feel like there are a lot of unused Biological charts and models sitting in the back of classrooms as decorations.  I have always wanted to have access to these beautiful models, but once I get one, how do you use it with a class full of 25+ students and ONE model? 

I inherited several of these in the classroom I moved into, and I've tried to find new ways to make use of them.
 


One way I've discovered is through station work.  As students move around the room, only 3-4 of them are investigating the model at a time. 



This works well some of the time, but I found recently on one of my models that it has screws on the back and can be taken apart!  This has allowed me to separate it into five parts and use it much more successfully.

I have students rotate through and I ask them to identify specific letters or numbers and then discuss the function of that part with their classmates as they progress. 


You could even ask them to find their favorite YouTube video explaining how that organ works, or connect it to diagrams in their text to make comparisons and find differences.  It's always nice to compare why an author chose to include or leave out certain information in their artwork.


I also have a lovely poster with overlays I use for the same purpose.  I feel like it's helping me get more use out of these resources that previously were just dusty decor.


If you've got access to some models you're not using, maybe you should revisit the options available for students to enjoy them, while getting up out of their seats and interacting with one another to help cement their memory of the information.


If you're interested in seeing what other things I like to do in my class, check out my store on TPT for free and paid items.  Thanks!

Circulatory STEM Challenge lab

Carolina offers a STEM Challenge lab for Anatomy & Physiology that has been a great addition to my Physiology class for the last two years. 

The students work their way through the inquiry process using pipets, tubes, and valves to model blood movement through a two chambered heart.




If you have the funds to try it in your classroom, it's well worth the investment.  I re-used a lot of the pieces in year two, and that helped cut down on the cost. 

Have students save their materials at the end and sort into separate bins for tubing, pipets, and connectors.  Almost all items in the kit are reusable.  The only thing I will need more of next year is the flexible tubing in longer lengths.  Students would also need more parafilm, but that's easily available outside the kit.





The hardest part for my students was not having explicit instructions to build the prototypes.  They are students who usually do really well following lab guidelines and the freedom to try things on their own was difficult.  By the third prototype they realized I wasn't going to tell them if they were right or wrong and got more comfortable trying things on their own.  There are multiple setups that meet the requirement in the instructions, so they can be creative!



It's so difficult to find something related to physiology that includes inquiry, and I would highly recommend this activity!

I would also recommend this for students who need a good homeschool activity about the Circulatory System, as it's very simple and instructions for the teacher are very clear with good sketches of the models.

Ernie's Exit Blood Typing Lab

If you teach Blood Typing and you haven't tried "Ernie's Exit" from The Science Spot you're missing out.

Ernie's Exit - The Science Spot

Typical Blood Typing Lab simulations cost around $40 for materials.  This lab costs less than $5 and is incredibly easy to set up.  The only things to purchase are milk, vinegar, red food coloring, and toothpicks.










The lab instructions mention using cups to mix the substances, but I use washable well plates because that's what I have on hand in my classroom.  Students rotate through 6 stations testing three suspects' blood, the victim's blood, and two samples from the crime scene.











The scenario is silly enough that students are engaged but not upset about the crime committed, and the suspects have silly nicknames as well.  Find out if Barbie Doll Jones or Slim Jim Snoot is the criminal!

This also pairs well with the Nobel Prize Blood typing online lab.

Students then have a hands on lab and an effective computer simulation to learn from.  Together with a short lecture or text reading, and the topic of blood types is successfully taught to most students.

I use these every year in combination and my students are engaged and walk away with a better understanding of the blood typing system.


Both Activities above are free online - but if you have interest in seeing the resources available in my TPT store, click on the link to see what free and paid activities I have created.

Dorky Science Joke to send you on your way -  "What's the best blood type for teachers?    A+ !"

Dissection Lab Practical Tips

If you've ever dissected with your students - you know how amazing, and how time intensive it can be.

I've taught A&P for 8 years now, and over those years I've streamlined my lab practical process.  I've put all the tips and tricks in a document and it's available for FREE download on Teachers pay Teachers.

Here's one of my favorite tips from the document:  The "Testing Zone"

Having a designated area in your room for testing makes the feel of the whole lab practical experience more formal.  I move the chairs from this area to the front of the room.  This does make for a more crowded area at the front, but on testing days I think it's worth it.  Students not testing are given an assignment for silent reading (usually the next section in the lab manual), and I very strictly require silence.

My Testing Zone Map

My classroom - each dissection specimen is covered with white paper until students begin testing.

For the rest of the tips - download my FREE pdf file explaining how I give lab practicals, including how I accommodate ESL and IEP students on these quizzes.

Gingerbread Anatomy - New and Improved!

While I have made Anatomy gingerbread men before - see HERE, today was a totally upgraded experience.  I found an amazing activity online by Mr. Stephens where students create a clay gingerbread man, and perform surgery on him.  

I used this as a review of anatomical terminology before their midterm.  We all know reviewing can be very dry and difficult to get students interested in, and this hooked even my most reluctant students.


Here's an example of the instructions from his lab - "The patient's spleen was ruptured during the accident and needs to be removed.  Make a sagittal incision in the lateral portion of the left hypochondriac region.  Which organ must you move out of the way in order to locate and remove the spleen?  Suture the incision by drawing a short line with cross marks on it."


With something as simple as toothpicks, a plastic knife, and play-doh, my students were reminded of planes/sections, directional terms, and abdominopelvic regions.

There is a surgery documentation form where students record all their procedures, and at the end they must determine priority order if they were doing triage on the patient in the ER - bringing in those real life career connections.

They had a great time and were reminded of their terminology in a way that paper and pencil just can't compete with.

The Wonderful World of Task Cards

Toward the middle of last school year, I discovered the wonderful world of task cards.  Now, I'd been forcing my students to move around the room to review stations for some time - but this is much more effective.  Each card has a question and a number, and students can choose which questions they'd like to answer.  They're full color - with engaging graphics, and the students really like them.  Some even have QR codes, or ask students to perform artistic tasks like drawing, writing poetry, or inventing superheroes.

I've been particularly enamored with a few users on TPT, including Surviving Science, Bond with James, Brilliant Biology, and The Science Duo.

After having these printed in full color, and laminating them in the school library (thanks go to our AWESOME librarian), I can keep these for years to come.

My favorite thing to do has been separating them into six categories and pushing my tables into six groups with table tent category labels.  Students are required to spend a certain amount of time at each table and then rotate, recording their answers on notebook paper or the worksheet provided.

So today, when i couldn't find a set of task cards with enough detail for anatomy, I created my own.  The first set is about epithelial tissue types, and I'm working on one about connective tissue types as well.

I chose to make my cards a little smaller than some of the ones on TPT, so it takes less paper and laminating material to make them - although I'm still toying with the idea of making them bigger like the others I've seen.

I hope you give task cards a try in your classroom - they're such an effective strategy!

Fizzy Drink Stoichiometry

Last year I stumbled across a lab for stoichiometry that has students create carbonated Kool-Aid by combining food grade citric acid and baking soda in their drink.  It worked beautifully, and we completed it again today.  I bought four packets of generic fruit punch drink mix, a bag of sugar, one box of baking soda, plastic spoons, cupcake paper wrappers for measuring the powders on the balance, enough red plastic cups for each team to have one, and enough small Dixie cups for each student to have one.  The food grade citric acid was a bit harder to find.  I called around to grocery stores after reading that it was used in canning, but no local shop had it in stock.  They sweetly offered to order it for me, but I figured I could do that myself.  I ended up purchasing a small jar online.  Each team of four students uses less than one gram, so the 100+ gram small jar is more than enough, and not expensive at all. Citric Acid


Students first taste the drink alone, drink + citric acid, then drink + baking soda.  It's a very dramatic response when they taste them.  I always stress that no one is required to eat/drink anything they don't wish to, but I encourage them to try it if they feel comfortable doing so. 

The final part of the experiment is to

1) write a balanced equation for the reaction between citric acid and baking soda
2) calculate the quantity of baking soda that would react completely with 0.30 g citric acid.
3) mix your calculated quantities together in the drink.  If calculations are correct it's lovely and bubbly, but not sour or salty.
4) answer analysis questions about the work, including several more three step stoic problems leading toward the idea of limiting reactants.

 I'm very happy with the science involved, the dramatic student interest, and the content ties to real life in such a simple way.  I think this lab will be a winner for years to come.


The activity HERE is very similar to what I use, although I've modified the questions to suit my curriculum.

Lift a Flap Stoichiometry Practice

When we move from one step conversions to three-step stoichiometry problems, students struggle at first.  The idea that they must combine three different conversions confuses them, and they need some support.  Often, they need individual help more than I can offer, with lots of them needing my help and only one of me available.  One solution I've found to this problem is "Lift A Flap" Stoichiometry Practice.



Students are given a regular stoich worksheet with three step problems (just like our practice the previous day, with new numbers and reaction examples).  Set up around the room are eight stations with the problems worked out for them, but hidden under little paper flaps.  They can peek to see how to set up any part of the problem they want, or they can just check their answers.





This activity isn't for a grade, as that just encourages them to copy the answers without thinking about the process.  They know that tomorrow we're going to be doing a stoich lab, and if they don't understand the process, they won't be successful in their lab.  This is a problem for two reasons - they will lose points tomorrow on the lab AND the lab is edible.  If they don't calculate the quantities correctly, their drink will turn out disgusting.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll take some photos and blog a bit about our Fizzy Drink Stoichiometry Lab.  It was a big hit last year, and I'm really looking forward to trying it again.

Diagnosis Success: Making Anatomy and Physiology Come Alive

Last spring I purchased a few new books from NSTA, one of which is titled "Diagnosis Success: Making Anatomy and Physiology Come Alive" by NH Maller.  I've implemented most of the book now, so i feel good about speaking to its success in my classroom.

The students pretend to be doctors, including starting with "Medical School" where they research four medical conditions (later seen in their patients), and reading and signing the Hippocratic Oath.

The book has four anonymous celebrity patients, and encourages you to choose popular faces from the entertainment industry to connect students to their work.  Each patient has a chart and over the course of six lab tests, students identify which condition the patient has and creates a final diagnosis.

Teachers are encouraged to support each lab test with information about a different body system, and covers the Urinary, Digestive, Blood, Lymphatic, Respiratory, and Endocrine Systems through the labs.  This has taken more time than I anticipated, but the students have stayed engaged each time I bring back their "Celebrity" patients and updating their medical charts.  I've kept manila folders in the class for each group to keep their lab results and patient charts in, so they're always accessible.

Some of the labs are a bit gross (digestive by-products), or socially edgy (HIV test), but the students have really enjoyed the work and I think they see a more powerful connection to WHY we might want to know how the body systems work.

One of the best things is, when I had a question I was able to email the author from her website, and she responded to me the next day (question about materials needed for a lab).  She was very friendly and helpful, and was interested to hear how the implementation worked out in the classroom.

Overall, I think this term was very successful, and the increased student engagement was compliments of Maller and her new book.

Oxidation Reduction Batteries

Last year when teaching about Redox reactions in Chemistry, I could feel my students lack of energy and imagine little floating Z Z Z Z zzzzzz over their heads.  I decided this year to do something a bit more interesting, inspired by a blog called Kitchen Science by the Naked Scientists.  They referenced a YouTube video where the author shows charging his iPod with a fruit battery.

I downloaded one such video, and used it as a jumping off point with my students to inquire, "Can you charge an iPod with a fruit battery?"  We spent 6 days on this short PBL project, and it was completely student driven.  Students were shown the video (hoax), and shown a real example in a Two-Potato Clock that I bought at a garage sale last year for $1.  

After students journaled about how they think the clock works, they chose groups and researched their own food batteries.  They had one day in the computer lab to research and develop their own experimental plan, including safety information, materials lists, step by step instructions, and blank data tables.

We had two days in class to perform experiments, and access to several types of wire, metal plates, alligator clips, multimeters, and potatoes.  Anything else needed to be brought from home.  They also used a Kill a Watt meter to measure how much energy their own phone or iPod charger uses, so they can make a direct comparison between their battery and charging the device.

At the end of collecting their data, we spent one day on direct instruction of what redox reactions are, and how they power the two potato clock example from the first day.  They compared their understanding from their journal on day 1 to their understanding after this activity.

Lastly, students used this new information and photos they took during the experiment to develop a two slide presentation for the class.  They included diagrams / photos of their most successful batteries, and the chemical reaction that was causing the flow of electrons (including identifying what was being oxidized and what was being reduced).  This quick two slide presentation provided a nice quick conclusion of their work, as well as reflecting on what they could have done to make their battery better in the future.

At the end of the class on the final day, we compared the data collected by students (amps and volts), and determined there was no way the initial video was real, it was indeed a scam.  One of my students said we'd "busted" the myth.  I'm just glad we learned about Redox with less pain than last year, and hopefully making more of a memory for the future.

Anatomy Gingerbread Men

When looking for a post-midterm activity for my students, I stumbled across an amazing blog with posts entitled Science Cookie Roundup.  She has collected many beautiful cookies with science themes, and I thought I would try my hand at this with my students.  We have one day between completing our exams and a two week holiday break, so this really fit the bill.

My cookies: skeletal, circulatory, and digestive systems

I purchased frozen gingerbread cookies from GFS, along with a tub of white icing, piping bags, and Wilton food colors I had from home baking projects.  I showed students a few example pictures I found online, and they had a blast.



My favorite part of this activity is that it's holiday related without being religious.  At school I need to be sensitive to the fact that  many of my students do not celebrate Christmas, but everyone can have fun decorating a cookie.


The students really enjoyed making their cookies, and were so excited to have me take pictures of their work.  Here are a few of their creations.

ok, so they're not all science...

beautiful detail on her holly and string of lights

little pink heart to accent her skeleton

This one broke his arm, so it's bleeding.

this skeleton is wearing a Santa suit.

Mr. and Mrs. Claus

Tarzan and Jane.  My student says this counts as science because Jane went to study the gorillas...

Two skeletons made by friends sitting next to one another, so they placed them holding hands.

nice contrast with the green and white

Molecular Workbench

One of my favorite Chemistry resources is Molecular Workbench.  This site, run by the Concord Consortium, offers online simulations for chemical concepts that can be very difficult for students to grasp with only paper and pencil.  My students are currently working on the Strong Chemical Bonds 2-day activity, although I've used their Intermolecular Forces module as well, with great success.  Both of these are a part of the SAM "Science of Atoms and Molecules" project.  Their website describes SAM as...

The Science of Atoms and Molecules project offers 24 research-based, field-tested activities for physics, chemistry, and biology. We provide these all freely to teachers and students online. Through the SAM activities' interactive models and simulations, we involve students in active learning. Teachers can register online to receive Teacher Guides for each activity and to gain access reporting functions to track student progress.

One feature I haven't investigated yet, is the ability to modify and make the simulations personalized.  It's on my to-do list for sure, as I'm sure the features are excellent, just like the rest of the site.

Even without personalization, I've found their simulations to be very useful.

http://mw2.concord.org/public/part2/bondtype/customDipoleMini.html

Today my students are using electronegativity values to determine if bonds between atoms are covalent, polar covalent, or ionic.  Most students have the idea that only two types of bonds exist when they enter my classroom, and this allows them to see the continuum of bond types, as well as discussing why these types of bonding occur.  With only a verbal description, very few of my students can grasp this concept, but this allows them to manipulate the bonds themselves, and provides a much deeper understanding.

If you haven't checked out what Molecular Workbench has to offer - you should!

Halloween Bone Comparison

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.

 If you'd like to download the instructions and worksheet for this activity - click here.

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.

Low Tech Memorization Technique

A lot of times we are looking for the newest electronic trick to help us learn new things.  Sometimes we forget that our old low-tech tools offer some good methods as well.

We are memorizing the muscles of the thigh this week, and I made a practice sheet with the pictures numbered so the students could write their answers on a separate page and check the answers written on the back, so it's all self directed.

Some students let me know that they need to write ON the pictures to help them memorize, and since our number of copies is watched over, I didn't want to make 5 copies for each student.  Instead, I gave the student an overhead transparency sheet, and an overhead marker. 

By simply laying the  plastic over the diagrams, she could write on the picture again and again to practice her muscle names for tomorrow's test.

Low tech solution - good learning tool!