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How my classroom turned into a giant cell
After the biochemistry unit, it’s pretty traditional to teach about cells next. During my first year, I struggled teaching this unit, because it feels so full of details with seemingly very little connection to each other. There is nothing worse than standing in front of a class and listing the organelle names and their […]
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Dehydration Synthesis and Hydrolysis with Pop Beads!
How do you teach dehydration synthesis and hydrolysis? These two terms can be really hard for students to understand and visualize. Some students struggle with “monomer” and “polymer” too. That’s why when I teach this lesson, I break out the pop beads! Why I love the pop beads: 1. They have an orientation. One […]
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How I Teach Mitosis and Meiosis in High School Biology
Check it out! This post was featured on the Teachers Pay Teachers blog! Learning about mitosis and meiosis in biology class can be challenging for students but I find it’s one of their favorites. Visual learners really thrive in this unit. Understanding how mitosis and meiosis work is essential for understanding independent assortment, […]
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Teaching Photosynthesis and Cell Respiration with Hands-On Activities
What other two topics during the year frighten the students (and sometimes the teacher) more than photosynthesis and cell respiration? These two units really can be daunting. They don’t lend themselves to a lot of fun activities and often the teacher feels stuck listing chemical reactions on a powerpoint, using vocabulary that might as well […]
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Teaching Biochemistry in High School
One of the most difficult units in high school biology to learn (and to teach!) is the biochemistry chapter. The complex vocabulary and the abstract concepts make this unit seem like a foreign language to most students. I know because for the first few years of teaching, all of my students had the same […]
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Dollar Store Ideas: Easter Egg Genetics!
It’s that time of year! Time to stock up on plastic easter eggs. It’s actually pretty difficult to get these little guys at other times of the year, but before Easter, you can find them everywhere! You can buy a whole bunch of eggs, , some pipe cleaners, and some googly eyes with about […]
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The Marvelous Drosophila: Exciting World of Fruit Fly Genetics
Flies really are the coolest model organism to study. Despite the fact they like to stowaway in your hair, there are a lot of reasons why Drosophila are exciting to study. 1. They are so colorful! The eye colors are truly beautiful to observe. When scientists are creating new mutants, sometimes the […]
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Differentiation in the Science Classroom #3: Alternate Assessments
In my last Differentiation in the Science Classroom post, I wrote about lab reports. And now I’m going to write a post about NOT writing lab reports. (Crazy, I know, but bear with me…) Having students write a full lab report every time I did a lab would have pretty much burned me and my […]
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Differentiation in the Science Classroom #2: Lab Report Writing
Helping all students with writing in the science classroom can be really difficult. A lot of science teachers give up trying to teach writing, because they feel the pressure to get all of the science content crammed into the year. Lab reports take an eternity to grade. And bad lab reports take longer than an […]
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Differentiation in the Science Classroom #1: In the Lab
Helping all students, including students with special needs and English language learners, in high school science classroom is a challenge. In this blog series, I will focus on a few different techniques that teachers can use to help each and every student in their class succeed. Some of these techniques can also help other students […]
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Using LEGO® Bricks to Model DNA Replication
One day, I was playing in my living room with my almost 3 year old son and we were building with his Lego® Bricks. My living room floor pretty much always looks like this: I have had a teaching challenge simmering in my head for a while now. How do I help students really […]
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Teaching Vocabulary
For a lot of students, I think the hardest thing about science is the vocabulary or the language scientists use in scientific papers, textbooks, or other teaching materials. Hypothesis? Endoplasmic Reticulum? Nucleolus vs Nucleus vs Nucleoid? Chromosome vs Chromatin vs Chromatid? It can be very hard for students to get these words straight. Why […]