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Awesome Lesson Starters

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Start the lesson with a bang!

What students experience in the first couple of minutes of a lesson makes a crucial difference in how well they engage with the learning intentions and as such, starter activites should be exciting, enthusing and unpredictable.

Here are some ideas for creating that ‘hook’ and maintaining the curiosity of students from the get-go.

  • Start the lesson with a fun or even explosive demonstration which ties in to the main body of the lesson. Sick Science has lots of great ideas.
  • Pass around mystery objects inside sealed bags. Ask the students to guess what they are and what they do.
  • Display apparatus, interesting objects and photographs around the room.
  • Play a short video on a loop and hand out questions about its content. This is even better if it is a video that you or the students have made. For example, a time-lapse video to recap the previous lesson or the steps of a practical investigation presented in Adobe Voice.
  • Write a true / false question or a statement on the board. As pupils arrive ask them to choose whether they think it is ‘true’ or ‘false’ or whether they ‘agree’ or ‘disagree’ and to stand to one side or another of an imaginary line down the middle of the room.
  • Display a picture and a question. Alternatively, you can display a number of different pictures related to a theme and simply ask ‘What have I Googled?’
  • Play ‘Backs to the Board.’ Divide your students into two or three teams. One volunteer from each team sits in a chair with their backs to the board, facing their friends. Write a key word on the board, making sure that the players in the ‘hot seats’ can not see it. After you say ‘Go!’, the members of each team must try to elicit the word from the volunteer without saying the word or giving any clues as to its spelling. The players in the ‘hot seats’ then swap with another member of their respective teams.
  • Arrange for a guest speaker to be standing in the room as the students arrive.
  • Recap the last lesson by displaying true / false statements or multiple choice questions and asking students to answer on mini whiteboards.
  • Use Socrative or Kahoot to prepare a fun quiz or questionnaire.
  • Play a song relating to the lesson as the students arrive.
  • Display multiple choice questions around the room. Give the students a time limit (these classroom timers are fun) and get them to move around the room looking for and answering the questions.
  • Set up apparatus for the lesson and display one or more questions about what it might be for and how it works. Alternatively, hide the appartus under a cloth and, before revealing it, ask questions about what it might be.
  • When they arrive, hand each student or pair of students a mystery object and ask them to come up with ideas about what it might be used for.
  • Greet the students at the classroom door wearing full protective equipment including visor or goggles.
  • Hand each student a question or an answer to a question and ask them to find their pair.
  • Play the ‘Who Am I?’ game but instead of a famous person designate each student a key word relating to the current topic. Remember, participants can only use ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ questions to work out who or what they are.

No matter how you start the lesson try to involve the students whenever you can and make sure it does not go on for too long. Link the activity to the main body of the lesson and allow time for questions and answers. Have fun!

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Kahoot!

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This fun game-based learning platform is simply the most popular app I have ever used in the classroom.

Kahoot! is actually very similar to another of my favourites, Socrative. The teacher (or students) creates a multiple-choice quiz using the web interface which students then access using their tablet, laptop or smartphone. There are also thousands of ready-made public Kahoots that you can use.

However, unlike Socrative, the questions are only displayed via the teacher’s device and the students answer by selecting one or more of four coloured buttons that appear on their own screens (see below). A time limit, a leadership board and the fact that students can get more points by answering quickly adds a competitive element which the students adore.

Capture15

Kahoot! can also be used as an interface for class surveys and I have recently started using it to display hingepoint questions during lessons as a means of formative assessment. It is completely free and although registration is required to create quizzes, students are not expected to login to play (they simply tap in a pin number displayed by the teacher). I highly recommend it.

 

Lemonade Bottle Ecosystem

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This is a wonderful activity in which students build a self-sustaining ecosystem containing primary producers (microscopic algae), primary consumers (brine shrimps) and decomposers (micro-organisms) inside a lemonade or coke bottle.

So long as you leave the bottle ecosystem on a sunny windowsill, the brine shrimps never require feeding and never run out of oxygen because the photosynthesising algae on which they feed, multiply by asexual reproduction. In turn, the algae never runs out of carbon dioxide, water or mineral salts because they are all recycled.

A book produced by Stephen Tomkins and Michael Dockery entitled ‘Brine Shrimp Ecology – a classroom-based introduction to ecology‘ is available to download copyright free from the British Ecological Society and contains a plurality of resources for ecological investigations including teaching notes, technicians’ guides and background information. The activities are primarily aimed at key stage 3 and key stage 4 students but could also provide the starting point for post 16 biology projects.

Blades Biological (based in the UK but accepting international orders) can supply brine shrimp eggs and algal cultures to get you started.

 

Alien Babies!

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This is a fun and creative activity that helps explain how sexual reproduction generates genetic variation in offspring. Sadly, I can not claim this activity as my own – I found it on TES a few years ago and have tweaked it only slightly.

robots

Before you start, check the students’ understanding of dominant and recessive alleles, phenotype and genotype. A simple way of demonstrating dominant and recessive alleles is to select two students to stand up and hold mini-white boards on which one has written ‘blue eyes’ (or a lower case b) and the other ‘brown eyes’ (or an upper case B). Ask the student with ‘brown eyes’ to stand in front of the student with ‘blue eyes.’ Highlight the fact that although both alleles / students are present, only the dominant allele is expressed in the phenotype / only one student can be seen.

You will need:

  • Chromosome cards (printed and cut out)
  • Large paper body cells (x2), egg cells (x2) and sperm cells (x2)
  • Genotype / phenotype table
  • Resources for building alien babies:
    • Brown and white marshmallows
    • Pipe cleaners
    • Coloured drawing pins
    • Cocktail sticks
    • Colouring pens
    • Nails
    • Wool or string

Steps:

  1. Give one set of chromosome cards (male and female) to each pair of students (mummy and daddy aliens).
  2. Ask the students to arrange their chromosomes into homologous pairs inside the nucleus of a body cell.
  3. Turn over the chromosomes so that the letters can not be seen.
  4. Ask the students to randomly assort the chromosomes in each homologous pair into one of two sperm cells or one of two egg cells. Explain that this represents meiosis and that the gametes produced are haploid.
  5. Students should then select one egg cell and one sperm cell and push them together across the table. Highlight that this represents fertilisation and that the new diploid cell is the zygote.
  6. Ask the students to put the chromosomes in the zygote back into homologous pairs.
  7. Students should complete the genotype / phenotype table and use it as a guide to start building their alien babies using the resources provided. Use the cocktail sticks to join the marshmallows together.
  8. Once complete, ask the students to compare their babies. Are there any babies that are identical to one another or their parents? How much genetic material did each parent contribute? Why is it important that meiosis halves the number of chromosomes in each gamete? Ask the students to think about the steps involved in making their alien babies then consider how sexual reproduction generates genetic variation in offspring.

Teaching Meiosis and Mitosis

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When teaching mitosis and meiosis at Key Stage 4 I find it effective to demonstrate using large cut-outs of cells and a small number of chromosomes made from pipe cleaners with beads representing the genes. The beads can be swapped from one chromosome to the other to show crossing over and the pipe cleaners twisted in the middle to represent two sister chromatids joined at the centromere.

 

 

Modelling the Digestive System

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This is a great activity for modelling the digestive system that the students will love.

You will need per group (2-3 students):

  • Potato masher or pestle
  • The leg of a pair of tights (open at both ends)
  • Ziploc bag
  • 3 plastic bowls
  • 2 sponges
  • Vegetable oil
  • Washing-up liquid in a bottle labeled ‘bile’
  • Cereal with milk, bread, biscuits (any leftover food will do)
  • Dilute hydrochloric acid in a beaker labeled ‘stomach acid’
  • Paper towels
  • Plastic gloves
  • Universal indicator solution
  • Five boiling tubes containing the following:
    • Water + blue food colouring (labeled ‘salivary amylase)
    • Water + red food colouring (labeled ‘pepsin’)
    • Water + yellow food colouring (labeled ‘trypsin’)
    • Water + green food colouring (labeled ‘pancreatic amylase’)
    • Water + pink food colouring (labeled ‘lipase’)

Health and safety: Always check for food allergies before you start. Students should wear plastic gloves and goggles when adding the stomach acid.

Lead-in

Even at Key Stage 3 most students have a good knowledge of the different parts of the digestive system so I usually begin with a simple labeling activity and ask one member of the class to record keywords on the board. I emphasise that the digestive system is essentially a long tube running from the mouth to the anus. I have a long piece of rubber tubing which is approximately the length of the alimentary canal (9 metres) which I show the students.

The mouth

I ask the students to put the food into one of the plastic bowls (the mouth). Large pieces of food need to be cut up into smaller bits (by the incisors) and then ground-up using the potato masher or pestle (the molars).

pestle

Highlight that this process of physically breaking down the food is mechanical digestion and that it greatly increases the surface area for chemical digestion by enzymes. Add salivary amylase (e.g. the water with blue food colouring) to begin starch digestion.

The esophagus

Tip the slop from the plastic bowl into the top of the tights and ask the students to squeeze the tights in order to push the bolus down the esophagus (this is modelling peristalsis) into the stomach (e.g. the Ziploc bag).

peri

The stomach

Once in the stomach, add the stomach acid (students should test the pH first by adding universal indicator solution) and the pepsin. Seal the bag and churn it to mimic the mechanical digestion of the stomach. Keep going! The food can remain in the stomach for a long time.

Small intestine

Tip the contents of the stomach (the chyme) into the second basin (e.g the small intestine). Add a little vegetable oil to represent oils and fats in the food. Explain that the bile helps emulsify these lipids and neutralises the stomach acid to provide optimum conditions for the pancreatic enzymes. Add some washing-up liquid and give the basin a little shake – the oil should emulsify and settle on top of the liquid as tiny droplets. Add the trypsin, the pancreatic amylase, and the lipase.

Use the sponges to absorb some of the liquid. This models the absorption of nutrients into the blood stream.

Large intestine

Transfer the undigested food into the final basin (e.g. the large intestine) and start absorbing water using the paper towels. Finally, ask the students to model what is left into a stool which will then exit the digestive system via the anus (egestion).

Assessing learning

To follow up the activity and check the students’ understanding of the processes involved, I ask them to illustrate the ‘journey of a cheese sandwich’ as it passes through the alimentary canal. A fun way of doing this is to use large pieces of paper (3 or 4 sheets of A3 stuck together will do) onto which the students first draw their outline, then the parts of the digestive system.

drawing dig

Once complete, add some string so that the paper can be worn around the student’s neck to illustrate the passage of food in-situ. Disposable plastic aprons could also be used.

Google Forms for Flipped Learning

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I am a big fan of Google Classroom and although I am not completely paperless quite yet, I am increasingly using Google Docs in class and when setting assignments for homework.

I think one of my greatest discoveries when completing the Google Certified Educator courses (available here and highly recommended) was the fact that you can embed YouTube videos directly into a Google Form then share it with your students as a flipped learning activity. There are a variety of different question types available including text and multiple choice as well as more advanced options such as scales for ordering or sequencing.

googleform2

The students’ responses are automatically collated in a Google Sheet document allowing you to add comments, apply conditional formatting or review their learning before the lesson.

Conveyor Belt Sushi and the Circulatory System

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Picture1

My students love sushi and there are a proliferation of conveyor belt restaurants in Bangkok. Not only do they serve delicious food but they also make an excellent model of the human circulatory system. Let me explain.

I usually start the lesson by showing the students five minutes of this video ‘Japanology – conveyor belt sushi’. I ask the students if they have ever been to this type of restaurant before and what they like about it. We discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages of conveyor belt restaurants.

I then ask the students to imagine that they are running a conveyor belt sushi restaurant in Bangkok. The restaurant is really busy and there are lots of hungry customers waiting to be fed. They need to get the food to the customers more quickly. How do they do it? Allow a few minutes for the students to Think, Pair, Share. (e.g. tell the chefs to get a move on and increase the speed of the belt motor).

I then tell the students that empty plates are piling up but there are no waiters to collect them. How could they solve this problem without employing more waiting staff? (e.g. the customers should put their empty plates back onto the belt so that they are returned to the kitchen).

plates

At this point I tell the students that conveyor belt sushi restaurants are similar to the human circulatory system (this tends to be met with lots of ‘ohhs’ and ‘ahhhhs’ as they realise that I haven’t completely lost the plot by talking about sushi in Biology).

The students are asked to extend the analogy by comparing the parts of the restaurant with parts of the circulatory system using a comparison table or bridge maps (bridge maps are used to visualise analogies by quite literally bridging the gap between the familiar and the new. The line of the bridge shows the common relationship that exists between two or more pairs of things).

bridge

The students should consider what each of the following represents in the human body and most importantly why (the relating factor):

  • The sushi (e.g. oxygen or nutrients);
  • The empty plates (e.g. deoxygenated blood);
  • The conveyor belt (e.g. blood vessels);
  • The chefs who prepare the food and put it on the plates (e.g. the lungs);
  • The motor which makes the belt go round (e.g. the heart);
  • The hungry customers (e.g. body cells).

Refer back to your opening questions about how best to get sushi to the hungry customers quickly and what to do with the empty plates. How does this relate to the circulatory system?

The activity should be extended by asking the students to evaluate the model. Are there any ways in which the comparison doesn’t quite work? Can the students think of any other ways of modelling the circulatory system?

This is a good lesson to have just before lunchtime because everyone gets very hungry!

Teaching Diffusion

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There are lots of fun experiments and demonstrations for showing the movement of particles from a region of their higher concentration to a region of their lower concentration down a concentration gradient (diffusion). Here are some of the methods I use.

Potassium permanganate

Potassium 1potassium2potassium3potassium 4

One demo that is often used is dropping purple potassium permanganate crystals into a basin or beaker of water and observing the slow dissolution and diffusion over time.

Cup of tea

Provide students with a tea bag (fruit tea bags are best because the colour change is more vivid) and a beaker of hot water (or water of different temperatures). Look at the factors affecting the rate of diffusion by telling the students that you are thirsty and want to speed up the time it takes to make your morning cuppa – how can they do this? (e.g. heat the water, put more tea into the tea-bags or teapot, reduce the volume of water).

Agar ‘cells’

Prepare agar plates and then ask the students to carefully cut a 1 cm wide moat around the circumference of the agar using a scalpel. Fill the moat with food colouring. The circle of agar represents a cell and the food colouring, the extracellular fluid. Over the course of the lesson the food colouring will slowly diffuse through the agar into the ‘cell’.

agar1agar 3

If you position a camera phone above the agar plate using a clamp stand and film using the time-lapse function you can capture and speed up the whole process to then show the students in summary at the close of the session. See video below:

Deodorant

The classroom will smell like a changing room but a very simple method of demonstrating diffusion is to spray deodorant in one corner and then ask students to raise their hands when they smell it. This creates a ‘Mexican-wave’ effect as the particles diffuse through the air.

Dialysis tubing

dialysis

The most effective way of demonstrating diffusion through a semi-permeable membrane is to fill dialysis tubing with starch and place it in iodine solution. The iodine will diffuse through the dialysis tubing (turning the starch blue-black) but the starch particles (being too big) will not diffuse in the opposite direction.

If anyone has any other fun demos of diffusion I would love to hear them!