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.

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.

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!

Muscle Contraction Modeling

In Anatomy and Physiology class, we are discussing the Sliding Filament Theory of Muscle Contraction.  I gave short notes yesterday (until I could tell I was sounding like Charlie Brown's teacher... wah wah wah...) on the basics of muscle contraction.  In past years my students have had trouble with the idea that although the muscle shortens during a contraction, the individual thick and thin filaments don't change in length.

One thing I'd tried to combat this misconception was to show animations of the process.  I think this helped for some students, but for others the concept still wasn't clear.  This year I decided that in addition to notes, animations, and reading assignments, we would try a little physical model.

I drew up some images of the thin and thick filaments, laminated them on colored paper, and cut them out.  I have this available on my TPT store if you want to download the images and instructions - click here.

Students worked in groups to place the pieces on top of a white board and label the parts, taking a photo of their work.  They had to take two pictures, one of the contracted muscle fiber and one of the relaxed muscle.    The conversations I overheard while they were working were very meaningful, they were engaged and referring back to their readings and notes when discussing both the placement and labeling, and while answering the questions.

After they completed their work they answered 6 questions, bringing together their understanding from the activity today, their reading assignment, and the notes.

1.      When the muscle is contracting, what changes happen to the A band?  I band?  H zone?

2.      What are the purposes of the M line and Z disc?

3.      This is a very simplified model of the myofilaments.  What detail could we add to make it more accurate?

4.      Is there any situation where the thick and thin filaments no longer overlap?  Is there a situation where the thin and thick filaments are incapable of overlapping anymore?

5.      Describe the total length of the sarcomere as the muscle contracts.  Do the lengths of the individual filaments change?

6.      Thinking about what we discussed in class, how does the contraction happen chemically?  Draw a picture and describe the steps.

Hopefully this will drive home the idea that although the sarcomere shortens, the individual filaments do not change in length.

Socratic Circle Anatomy Discussion

A technique that was suggested to me last year was the Socratic circle.  If you haven't heard of this, it's basically a class discussion technique that is very student centered, with teacher as occasional facilitator and the children leading the chat.  It is supposed to foster both literacy and content knowledge skills in a more authentic way because they're engaging in discussion and thought where they relate back to the original source that had the information.

We've already done several activities with bone at this point - we've learned and quizzed over compact and spongy bone (along with the femur dissection here), learned the differences between the axial and appendicular skeleton, bone shapes, and names for bone surface markings.  Thursday we did the Bone Forensics Lab mentioned here, where students determine differences between male and female skeletons and predicted height from femur and humerus length.  We've most recently read several articles or selections from books, and our culminating activity will be this Socratic circle discussion.

If you'd like to download full instructions for free - click here to visit my TPT store.

I have guidelines typed for the students, which we go over together as a class.

1. Be prepared for the discussion.  You can't be a successful participant unless you're familiar with the texts.
2. When you speak, address the other students, not the teacher.
3. Refer to the texts and mention where you found the information that supports your idea.
4. If you don't understand what another student means, ask a question.
4. It's okay to say "pass" if you have nothing to say.
5. Don't raise your hand, simply take turns speaking.

I also realize that since this is the first time many students have participated in this way, they may need some prompting.  I provide them with these prompts, but in the past I found they only needed them at first.  Once they got going they used their own ideas.

What did you mean by _____________?
I believe ________________ because ____________.
In the text I read ________________________.
I disagree with _____________ because __________.

The texts my students are reading for this discussion are

Written in Bone  by Sally M Walker (we chose Chapter 2 "Who Are You?")
Can We Predict Height? by Robert H Shmerling
Distribution of Lengths in the Normal Femur and Tibia in Korean Children from Three to Sixteen Years of Age by Jeong Hyun Ha

The reason I chose these texts is because they related to the topics we'd covered in class, they were interesting to read, and they represent three different difficultly levels.

The reading levels of the texts are grade 11, 14, and 17 respectively according to the Fleisch-Kincade method.  I think offering texts at different levels allows all students to participate regardless of ability, and offers enrichment for all students to be exposed to the harder texts.

When situating the room,  you can choose from a few ideas.  I'm planning on using one big circle, as my class has 18 students, so it's pretty small.  If I were using this technique with my class of 29, I would do two circles, one inside the other and have the students switch from inside to outside halfway through the discussion.  You can have students on the outside act as "notetakers" recording the ideas that are presented and noting things they'd like to add to the conversation.  You can also split the class into two discussion groups, but this offers some challenges to grading and facilitating.

When grading the conversation, you can mark the names of the students in the boxes, and then record their interactions with a code.  Some suggested marks are

RT = reference to text
O = expressed opinion
C = comment
RC = repeated another's comment
Q = asked a question

Obviously, you can tailor this to your needs, but it's a good starting point.  I took the discussion as a "classwork" grade, and required at least three comments/responses to earn full points.  You can ask for more or less comments per class depending on the size of your group.

Lastly, my discussion went quite smoothly in the past when I've written specific "Guiding Questions" for the students to discuss.  Like any conversation, sometimes it really flows and doesn't need any prompting, while other times the kids need a new topic to start the conversation again.  I aimed for two open ended questions per reading, and one finale question that allows students to discuss what they found most interesting or thought provoking in the texts.  I think seven quality questions will be enough to last the whole period.

The first time I tried this technique I was nervous... but I found the hardest part was NOT participating in the discussion myself!  The kids did a great job, and it's definitely worth a try.

Critical Thinking Skills

Last night I saw this posted on facebook, and I really enjoyed the ideas and the formatting.  Inspiring me to look for more activities that inspire deep thinking rather than just areas 1 and 2!

originally from http://www.flickr.com/photos/vblibrary/4576825411/sizes/l/in/pool-27724923@N00/

 I was looking for something for the skeleton in A&P because just memorizing the names of the bones gets tired after a while.  I think I'm going to use the ideas from these activities, modified for the bones that I have access to in my classroom.


Bone Forensics

Bones Can Tell Us More

After I modify the activity, I'll post results of what we did and how well it worked.

Beef Femur Dissection

This week in Anatomy & Physiology we are discussing bones.  We've read about bones, taken notes, and summarized what we know in graphic organizers.  If you'd like to download a copy of the instructions - click here.

This week's standard:

4.03 Describe the structure and functions of bone. Differentiate between spongy and compact bone.

I thought something new and fun would be to dissect a bone.  I haven't done this activity with my A&P class before, but wanted to give it a try.  I contacted a local butcher here in Central Ohio, who was wonderful enough to give me a great deal on some beef femur bones.  I got two femurs cut down the center to see the bone lengthwise, and 15 discs (about 1" thick) for students to dissect and observe under the dissecting microscope.

Beef femur with the head cut off - oops.

I would recommend showing the butcher a pic of what you wanted before s/he made the cuts, as they didn't understand that I wanted the femoral head attached and cut it off (but still were able to give it to me separately).





I had the students identify the following structures: diaphysis, epiphysis, epiphyseal line, metaphysis, articular cartilage, red marrow, yellow marrow, spongy bone, compact bone.  In addition, most were able to locate and identify skeletal muscle, tendon, and blood vessels.

Under the dissecting microscope, all students were able to observe the yellow marrow, and some were able to see some spongy bone with red marrow in it as well.

slice of bone for students to dissect, this student is removing some yellow marrow.

I think the most surprising thing that students found was that spongy bone didn't feel spongy.  I think they expected it to be soft and pliable, and it was a good experience for them to see how firm the lattice structure is where the red marrow is found.

I think next year I will show the butcher a pic of what I want before I order my bones, and for my students, I will make sure that I keep a sample of the spongy bone and red marrow (which is more difficult to remove than the yellow marrow) so that all students have a chance to view it under the microscope.

Overall, not a bad first try - and I think next year will be even better!