Scrambling to have your students do an icebreaker? Have your students do the descrambling instead!
Scientific Method Scramble Icebreaker Biology Roots
What will you be doing in your science class on the first day?
Back to School GiveaWHAT?!
Myself and fifteen other secondary science teachers on TpT have teamed up to kick start your Harley of a school year (at least, it will be after you’ve seen what we have to offer)! We’re each offering a contest to win some awesome prizes for secondary science resources. All you have to do is visit our pages to see what we have to offer and enter to win.
Plus- we’ve teamed up to pitch in for a HUGE $100 prize!
This giveaway is designed for secondary science teachers only (grades 6 and up).
What can you win?
Enter to win $100 TpT gift card (4 prizes) to spend on the resources of your choice at teacherspayteachers.com, plus multiple additional prizes from individual teacher-author found on their blog. All you need to do is follow this blog hop anytime between August 8th through August 12th to reveal the secret code and enter it below.
I am number 15 and my word is “deGrasse”. Collect the words from each blog, write them down in numerical order, and copy the secret sentence into joint rafflecopter giveaway. This rafflecopter form is the same on every blog, so you only need to enter once from any one of our blogs!
But first, please enter to win a gift certificate from Biology Roots
First place winner will receive $25 worth of resources
Second place winner will receive $15 worth of resources
Third Place winner will receive $10 worth of resources
Scroll through the arrows below to enter to win each prize:
And the Give-a-what:
Digital Resources for the Digital Age
If you have Google Classroom, you already know the benefits of going digital. To name a few:
- Less paper
- Less curse words in the copy room *wink wink*
- Digital Interactive Notebooks do not require scissors, paper, or glue (which also means less MESS)!
- Easier Grading
- Students can keep track of their work (no more the dog ate my homework excuse!)
- Easier organization at your fingertips
- Digital resources can be used to supplement paper resources if you aren’t ready to go 100% digital!
- Google offers a lot of time saving applications for teachers, like Google Quizzes.
- You can add comments right in the document!
Here is a video preview of some ecology digital activities designed for Google Drive:
In Google Classroom, you can make a copy for each of your students to have. They can use digital notebooks on computer, Chrome books, or iPads. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
5 Helpful Tips for Teaching Genetics
Here is #2 for my “5 Helpful Tips” series. If you missed the first one, check out 5 Helpful Tips for Teaching Photosynthesis.
Genetics is one of my favorite things to teach *cue sparkly harp music*. I really look forward to teaching genetics! And one thing that makes it so fun for me is discussing human genetics. Human genetics can be a bit mystifying, so I usually do not bring it up until we’ve discussed polygenic inheritance among other complex patterns, such as incomplete dominance. That is because most human traits are not Mendelian! For example, I have three children. Each one of my children has different colored eyes (hazel, brown, and blue). Students love discussing this stuff and bringing up their own families, too!
Here is a complete list of human genetic myths that you can read for your consideration. But, that doesn’t stop us from making babies in biology class. Besides, I firmly believe we still do not know everything there is to know, and we are making new discoveries every day. I tell my students that we are going to pretend that traits are Mendelian for a day so that we can do our fun Making Babies Heredity Simulation. I really feel that you need to find a happy medium here- I don’t want to teach students that human traits such as eye color and earwax are Mendelian, but I also want them to connect and have fun. So we do a pretend day each year. Besides, it gives them Punnett square practice and I honestly could not imagine teaching genetics without it! The kids have too much fun!
Visual learning is a lot of fun – I’m a visual learner and I use a lot of visuals when I teach. This website from Wiley’s Global Resources provides visual animations to help support Mendel’s ideas and laws.
I have found this web site invaluable for those who need extra practice or need an little extra oomph for grasping concepts in class.
Busting Student Misconceptions:
- Students tend to struggle with some terminology- it can be really difficult for students to differentiate between terms such as DNA, gene, and allele. Be sure to remind the students that there is in fact a difference, or maybe even ask them to compare them as a do-now, warm up, or bellringer.
- Are popular traits more dominant? No. You know this. Your colleagues know this. But sometimes we forget to mention this to our students. Check out my Exploring Human Traits Lab, in which students are asked to analyze this using your classroom as an example.
- Epigenetics- students should know that environment can play a role in the characteristics of organisms. Epigenetics studies changes in heritable traits that are outside the human genome. Here is a quick video you can show your students about how epigenetic tags can be passed on:
- Lastly, be sure to mention a few times along the way that mutations are not always harmful- and in fact some can be a good thing! The two examples I like to use are blue eyes (a neutral mutation) or even a turtle’s shell, which would be considered a positive mutation of its ancestor’s ribcage!
Veteran teachers, do you have any tips or advice when teaching genetics? I’d love for you to share them in the comments!
Stay Science Classy,
Vanessa
Day 5 of 5 days of Holiday Cheer is here!
Ok fellow science nerds… you do not want to miss this!
Be sure to sign up for my newsletter by going to the page listed in the tabs that says “Subscribe to My Newsletter” because all future promotions and Holiday Cheers will be exclusively for newsletter subscribers. Click here to subscribe to the newsletter.
For the 5th and Final Day of “5 Days of Holiday Cheer”, over a dozen amazing science teacher-authors have teamed up to offer you a fabulous collaborative smorgasbord of 13 different resources, which you can access here: 5 Days of Holiday Cheer Science Bundle
The link is good for 24 hours only so get it while you can!
… and please remember to sign up for my newsletter if you’d like to participate in future promotions such as these!
Stay Science Classy,
Vanessa
Day Four of Holiday Cheer: Free Interactive Notebook Pages
Day Four of Holiday Cheer is good for Today Only (December 10th, 2015).
You can get a sample of my DNA Interactive Notebook by clicking on this link!
It expires tonight, so get it while you can!
Next year, I plan to do another 5 Days of Holiday Cheer, however it will no longer be advertised on my blog; instead it will be exclusively for newsletter subscribers.
Please subscribe to my newsletter to take place in future promotions and to get the dirt on Biology Roots!
Day Three: Entire Store is 20% off
My lesson planning is all set for the new year, so when we come back to school on January 4th I have the whole week set up. It might be my healthy dose of OCD kicking in, but I’ve always found it hard to enjoy my time off if I know I’ll be scrambling to find lessons the last night of vacation.
If you still have some lesson planning to do, bring in the new year with a Biology Roots product. For Day Three of “5 Days of Holiday Cheer”, I’m offering my ENTIRE store at 20% off for Today only, December 9th!
Day Two of Holiday Cheer: 25% off all Biology Roots Bundles
Day TWO of “5 Days of Holiday Cheer” means 25% all bundles!
That means popular bundles, like my Super Sub Plan Bundle, which is already discounted at $35.98 will be reduced to $26.98 for December 8th only!
Or one of my best selling units the Complete Cell Unit, will be 25% off to cost $21.74 (which includes the Cells Task Cards Exhibition Lab).
Please Check out all my participating bundles for a chance to grab them at 25% off on December 8th.
Stay tuned for tomorrow: Day 3 of Holiday Cheer Week!
Stay Science Classy,
Vanessa
Day One of Holiday Cheer: BOGO
A group of awesome secondary science teacher authors are teaming up to launch “5 Days of Holiday Cheer”.
This new BOGO Sale for any one item purchased in my store today, December 7th, 2015. The BOGO applies to items of equal or lesser value (up to $15), and is only good for TODAY, December 7th, 2015.
The details in a nutshell:
– Item must be purchased on 12/7/15
– BOGO (buy one get one) good for ONE item up to a $15 value
– Simply forward your sales receipt to biologyroots@gmail.com along with the link of the item you would like for free (equal of lesser value).
– Deal ends at midnight 12/7/15
Please check out my store, Biology Roots, to check out what I have to offer. All you have to do is buy one and you get another for free!
Some hot items that apply to the BOGO deal:
Buy one set of sub plans, get another set FREE.
Buy one body system exhibition lab, get another set FREE!
Happy Holidays!!
Stay Science Classy,
Vanessa
Creating a Global Classroom
For November’s Secondary Smorgasbord blog hop, we’re focusing on creating a global classroom. I think it’s appropriate for this month, because my particular experience with creating a global classroom also ties into Thanksgiving: being thankful for your health, your family, your friends, and your education.
In an age of information, you would think that students would be more informed about the happenings around the globe; but I’ve found when working with teenagers, it’s also an age of isolation: many (_not_all) are focused on themselves, their circle of friends, their hobbies, and their… well, Facebook accounts. With so much at stake, and so much possibility at their fingertips, I decided to get my students engaged on Change.org. (ages 13+).
The students were not required to sign any petitions, but they could outside of school if they wanted to- and many did! Upperclassmen in my Environmental science class (who was given plenty of advanced notice), would state their case, trying to “sell” the rest of the class an issue found on Change.org. They could make a poster, a PowerPoint, brochures, anything! The rules were simple: they had to be related to the environment, health, or human rights, but could not include politics or religion, and could include a link to Change.org. If the students really wanted to present an issue that was not found on Change.org, they could start their own petition.
One year, had a young lady in 11th grade who took matters into her own hands and went above and beyond our classroom, working hard over the remaining two years of her high school career to save the whales from commercial whaling. I had one young man who started his own school wide petition that would eliminate styrofoam from the school cafeteria, which was widely successful, and lead to the entire district phasing out the use of styrofoam over the course of 2 years. I loved doing this because it gave some students a lot of insights about global problems- some did not know that clean water was ensured for all countries, or vaccinations, or even education! I really think doing this with my class meant that I was opening up their eyes to the world, and making them feel more humbled about their lifestyle.
I’d like to share the documentation that I provided my students for this class project!
For my biology classes, I unfortunately did not have the time to do these types of projects, but particular web quest we did in class was usually an eye opener; I’d get a lot of “that HAS to be wrong!” or “Is that I typo?” and “I don’t believe that.” The web quest was no other than the Human Population and Ecological Footprint Web Quest. This explores the growth of the human population and has a section where it compares the US to other countries as far as production and waste. The students also explore their own ecological footprint.
Stay Science Classy,
Vanessa