I designed this worksheet for an introductory biology class. It reinforces concepts that are introduced in the first chapter. Students learn about how science works, what a hypothesis is, and how data is analyzed.
Reinforcement worksheets have definitions or sentences that include a key word and students much choose from a bank of vocabulary words listed. Words include: experiment, qualitative, theory, and inference.
In addition, I include a section with a graph where students analyze data and identify the manipulated variable and the responding variable (independent vs dependent) . These are concepts that are a central theme to the scientific method.
Even after going over the concepts and doing labs such as “How Does a Water Strider Stay Afloat?” students still have difficult identifying variables and a control group in an experiment. Don’t worry too much about this in the first chapter. Students will have many opportunities to master this content throughout the course.
One way that I use these reinforcement worksheets is to give students 5-10 minutes of quiet independent work time, then go over the answers with them. Then I project the worksheet on the whiteboard and have a student volunteer write in the answers. The other students in the class can check their answers and discuss the vocabulary.
The next day, you can give students the worksheet with the word bank removed for a more challenging exercise. If you download the google doc linked below, you can save a copy to your own drive and modify it
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Grade Level: 6-12
Time Required: 15-20 minutes