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  • Cell Labeling: Simple and Complex

    Cell Labeling: Simple and Complex

    Students practice labeling organelles on a simple model (2D) and a more complex model.   The idea is for students to gain an appreciation for how cell diagrams are created.  They don’t all look alike, and are often artistically created.  Cell organelles tend to follow basic design rules, like the mitochondria will generally look like a…

  • Investigation: How Do Insects Move?

    Investigation: How Do Insects Move?

    Have you ever thought about how insects with 6 legs actually crawl?  Human movement on two legs is pretty simple: left-right-left-right, but all insects have 6 legs attached to a thorax.    In this activity, I ask students to observe an insect closely, usually a dubia roach.

  • Using Anchoring Phenomenon with Lessons

    Using Anchoring Phenomenon with Lessons

    Start lessons on osmosis with an activity and anchoring phenomenon. View cells exposed to salt and observe how they change!

  • Penny Lab: Soap and Surface Tension

    Penny Lab: Soap and Surface Tension

    Most science classes begin the year with an exercise on the scientific method.  It can be difficult to plan a short activity that will reinforce the main ideas of developing and testing a hypothesis.  This lab is simple and doesn’t require much in the way of materials: pennies, water, and pipettes (and paper towels for…

  • Cell Structures: A Graphic Organizer

    Cell Structures: A Graphic Organizer

    This graphic organizer (concept map) organizes the cell structures around three main parts of the eukaryotic cell: the nucleus, cytoplasm, and cell membrane.

  • Science News Articles for Kids

    Science News Articles for Kids

    Are you looking for current science for your students?   This is a list of go-to sources for reliable science news.   

  • Photosynthesis Coloring

    Photosynthesis Coloring

    Students read short text passages and then color images to help them relate the textual information with the graphic.

  • Cell Cycle Labeling

    Cell Cycle Labeling

    Students label the image of a cell undergoing mitosis and answer questions about the cell cycle. 

  • Label the Body Regions

    Label the Body Regions

    This worksheet is used with a beginning anatomy unit that discusses anatomical terminology and body regions. 

  • Comparing the Ameba to the Paramecium

    Comparing the Ameba to the Paramecium

    With the adoption of NGSS, I’ve had to make cuts to some of the lessons that biology classes of the past enjoyed. I was sad to see it go, but we no longer do a unit on the Kingdom Protista, but I still manage to fit a microscope lab into other sections.

  • Deer: Predation or Starvation?

    Deer: Predation or Starvation?

     This activity asks students to calculate the population change (births – deaths) and then graph the number of deer and the number of wolves. 

  • Graphing Hand Span and Height

    Graphing Hand Span and Height

    This exercise illustrates the difference between bar graphs and scatter plots and walks students through the process of representing data they collect. 

  • Data Analysis and Interpreting Graphs

    Data Analysis and Interpreting Graphs

     Students practice analyzing pie charts, scatter plots, and bar graphs in the basic worksheet that is designed to pair with lessons on the scientific method.    Most beginning biology students (in high school) are fairly adept at interpreting basic information from graphs, though scatter plots are sometimes challenging for them.  I usually do this type…

  • Investigation: How Does Exercise Affect Heart Rate

    Investigation: How Does Exercise Affect Heart Rate

    Design and conduct an experiment to measure the effect of exercise on heart rate. Aligned to NGSS standard on feedback mechanisms.

  • Body Systems Graphic Organizer

    Body Systems Graphic Organizer

    Graphic of the body systems where students fill in blanks about structures within the organ system and their functions.   This concept map can be used as a review or as a way to organize notes over the body systems.