An Awesome Biology Class that Students Will Never Forget!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Inroduction: Benefits of Engaging Students

It is important to engage students when teaching biology or any type of science for that matter. Many times, lecturing just won’t cut it. Kids need to EXPERIENCE biology and science to understand it and how it relates to their everyday lives. It is not “cool” or “professional” to just lecture and pass out busy work. Kids do not learn well that way. Research shows this. The engage part of a lesson is to get the kids attention to introduce a topic and allow them to study it further. They will then be able to hold onto the information longer and truly understand the subject and how it relates to their everyday lives! You must remember, not every child is as crazy about science as we are. We need a way to make science enjoyable for even them. These are some of the benefits of an engaging activity in your classroom:

• Increased focus from students
• Makes thinking visible
• Allows students to internalize the material and recall it.
• Allows students not to just memorize facts, but to solve problems.
• Makes students want to come to class.
• Gives students reasons about why the topic relates to their everyday lives.
• Gives students more control over what they learn
• Allows differentiated instruction for everyone
• Allows students to practice NGSS standards as well as state standards
• Provides more meaningful explanations to students

These are some of the main reasons to use engaging activities with your students. In this post, I will list five resources that are at a low cost to you to use with your students! This will be an awesome biology class for kids to remember! Here we go!

Online Games (“Build-a-Cell”)

There are many games on the internet that have to do with biology. I went onto Pinterest and found a plethora of resources for biology games. I will share one with you. There is a site for biology games on the internet, https://www.spongelab.com/game_pages/BAC.cfm.  This website has is a free resource for various science games. The one that I looked up was called “build a cell”. This game teaches about the organelles of an animal, bacterial, and fungal cell. Students will drag the organelles into the correct position on the cell and then read information about each organelle. They will then find substructures inside the organelles and place them where they are needed. They can then see how the cell’s organelles will interact with each other. This is a free game that is meant for high school biology. This site also has many other games that have to do with chemistry, physics, and physical science.

Simulations (Dissections and Genetics):

Many times in biology, it is hard to have kids do dissections. It may cost extra to get the organisms to dissect and many kids might feel uncomfortable dissecting the organisms. No worries! There are simulations that students can do online to teach them about the parts of an organism and proper dissection methods. One that I found was called Froguts. This is a website that allows students to do simulations where they dissect different organisms, without the mess! This is helpful for students that struggle with dissections. The website is http://www.froguts.com/. This is an interactive way to learn about the body systems of different organisms anywhere you want! There are also many other simulations on the internet as well. These include simulations not only on dissections, but on microscopes, genetics, Punnet squares, cell biology, and even DNA electrophoresis. There is a specific website that I would that has all of these in one place, http://onlinelabs.in/biology. There is also another site that has many genetics simulations. Genetics is hard for students to learn sometimes, but this makes it easier! http://www2.edc.org/weblabs/WebLabDirectory1.html.

Here is a picture of the what the Froguts simulation looks like!

Demonstrations and Props:

There are many demonstrations and props to use in biology to teach students about different subjects. Some of the subjects may be hard to teach students about without an actual item for them to touch or to relate to the subject. I looked on the internet for different props and demonstrations that can be used in biology. I will mention a couple of them here and provide a summary of my findings. To show students about the chemistry and composition of blood, one teacher put red food dye into a water bottle with different components to represent the parts of blood. She put Cheerios in to represent red blood cells, marshmallows to represent white blood cells, and purple pom-poms to represent platelets. This provides the students with a visual representation of what the components of blood are. Another teacher brought in a bunch of gummy candy and materials for students to make a 3-D model of DNA, which they could eat afterward. This is helpful in learning about the structure of DNA.  Another demonstration to give students a better idea of what osmosis is involves dissolving an egg shell in vinegar. This shows the movement of water across a semipermeable membrane. As for props, you could use life-like models, such as a skeleton for the skeletal system and a model of the heart when studying the human body. Here is a picture of the blood model:

Apps:

There are a lot of apps online that can be used in biology. They can be downloaded onto the device of students and be used to review concepts before a test or quiz. There are apps that allow kids to do dissections at home, genetic experiments, and apps that show to anatomy and physiology of the human body. An app that I found was called iCell and is meant to help students with locating and learning about the different parts of the cell. This reviews animal, plant, fungus, and bacterial cells. It outlines each part and the function. Another one that I found was Anatomy 4-D. This app allows students to have a map of all of the parts of the human body at reach. This app tells about the different parts of the body and their function and helps immensely with anatomy and physiology. I also found an app that studies the human brain and lists the functions as well. This could be helpful in biology as well as psychology.

Here is a picture of the Anatomy 4-D app:

Videos (Crash Course and Ted TALK):

There are a lot of videos out there about biology and new discoveries in this field. I have found that TED TALKS have a great amount of information about new discoveries and how they are used in our life. I have found that these videos are useful in sparking interest in children and making them want to know more about a subject. The TED TALK videos that I have seen have a wide array of topics. These include new discoveries in genetics, the human body, microbiology, and so much more! These can be really beneficial to students because they are like reading the newspaper in science. They are interactive and students will enjoy watching them. Many biological concepts can be very hard to master and may take some time. Crash course videos on You-Tube do a great job at taking complex topics and making them simple to understand. These topics include cellular respiration, mitosis, genetics, biochemistry etc. Here I will show you an example of two of the videos that I found from each source.

Teaching biology or any type of science, for that matter, must be ENGAGING. Students need to be able to EXPERIENCE science to internalize the information. With free online resources, you can make teaching and learning super easy and awesome! #ScienceTeaching #EDT431 #AnnMackenzie

— Delaina Teresa Mattaliano (@DelainaTeresa) February 6, 2019

Conclusion: There are a lot of resources online to use in a biology classroom. These are just five of the resources that I found- there are many more! Many of these are free and are at no cost to students. I found ideas for this on pinterest and on many different sites. I looked for a long time, finding the best resources. A way to engage your class is out there. It is literally at your fingertips! Engaging the class using these resources, has many benefits and makes teaching easier and learning easier.