Interactive Notebook Pages for the Protista Kingdom

30 Student Pages on Algae and Protozoans!

Well, I have just put the polishing touches on my 9th set of interactive notebook pages for biology. This set covers the Protista Kingdom, a topic that I always love to teach!  It may not be fancy and use sophisticated technology, but a microscope and some pond water always makes for a fun time in the biology lab.

These pages  can be used in so many ways. Personally, I like to use them as warm ups each and every day.  I have my students keep a warm up notebook (aka interactive notebook) and I have seen a drastic improvement in the retention of content. These half-page sized mini-lessons are perfect for homework assignments, bell ringers, tutoring, and test prep.

I started this adventure at the beginning of this school year, and have been immensely pleased with the result.  My earlier blog posts on this "warm up / bell ringer" topic can give you more details.  All of the earlier posts can be viewed at these links:

• Post 1:  Biology Warm Ups and Bell Ringers
• Post 2:  Biology Interactive Notebooks
• Post 3:  Ecology Interactive Notebooks
• Post 4:  Genetics Warm Ups
• Post 5:  DNA, RNA and Protein Synthesis
• Post 6:  Teaching Evolution with Interactive Notebooks
• Post 7:  Interactive Notebooks Making Teaching Viruses and Bacteria a Snap!
• Post 8:  Giant Bundle!
• Post 9:  Teaching Fungi?

A picture is worth a thousand words, so without further ado, here is a preview of this newest set:

In my TpT store, you will find a FREE Sampler Pack that includes samples from each of my 9

interactive notebook sets.  For the Kingdom Protista, I have included this page in the free sampler pack.

Click the image to the right or the link above to download the free sampler pack.

What is included in the Protista Kingdom set??

You can view all of my interactive notebook products by clicking the image below or this link.

Thanks for spending a few minutes at my blog. As always, I welcome your comments and questions.

Pink Lake Hillier in Australia

Can this be real??

The answer to that is ... YES!!  This is the pink Lake Hillier that is found in Australia.  Recently, in my Biology 1 classes, we were studying the characteristics of algae and other protists.  Algae are classified according to their color, and we were discussing the fact that the algae produce pigments of various colors.  There are green algae, brown algae, red algae, yellow-green algae, etc.  Most of us are extremely familiar with the green "pond-scum" that we commonly see in our local lakes, streams and ponds, so I wanted to give my students some examples that would be less familiar to them.

As a result, I did a little googling to see what I could find to use in my classes. I immediately zeroed in on this pink lake.  It didn't take much research to quickly realize that there are quite a few of these pink lakes around the world, and the exact cause of the "pinkness" is not completely agreed upon.

Lake Hillier seems to be the most famous of these pink lakes.  In quick and easy reading format, here are the facts:

• Lake Hillier is located on Middle Island.  This is one of the largest islands that make up the Recherche Archipelago in Western Australia.
• The lake is about 600 meters (2,000 feet) long and about 250 meters (820 feet) wide.
  
• The lake is surrounded by a rim of sand, with a narrow strip of vegetation separating it from the Southern Ocean.
• When viewed up close the color of the water is not as vibrant as when viewed from the air, but the pink color is permanent and is not a trick of the light.  When a sample is taken into a container it retains the pink color.
• Lake Hillier is a salt water lake.  As a result, only two forms of life have been discovered living in its waters.  One is the algae known as 
  
  Dunaliella salina , and the other is a halophilic (salt-loving) bacteria.  These organisms produce carotenoids, giving the water a bubble gum pink color.
• The salt content of the lake is comparable to the Dead Sea at about 40%
• Although very salty, it is perfectly safe to swim in Lake Hillier.  The only problem is that it is very hard to get there!  Travel to the lake by helicopter is the most common method of travel.
• Other pink lakes are found in Senegal, Canada, Spain and Azerbaijan.

Thanks for stopping by, and have fun teaching!

Can I Make Protists More Interesting For My Students?

When a biology teacher says to the class, "Today we are going to start our unit on the algae, followed by a unit on the protozoa,"  the collective groan from the class can be deafening.  Nothing can be worse to a high school kid than studying algae!  Well..... maybe studying the fungi is worse, but not by much!  

My solution?  Excitement!!  I must be a real science nerd, but I really, really like teaching this topic.  And when I get excited, my students (mostly) get excited, too.

The Protista Kingdom contains all organisms that cannot be classified as fungi, true plants or animals.  The range and variety of organisms in this kingdom is huge!  Some protists  are more closely related to plants, fungi, or animals than they are to other protists.  Biologists cannot agree on how to classify these organisms, and some scientists have now split the Protista Kingdom into as many as 20 different kingdoms.  The term "protist" is still used as a convenient way to refer to eukaryotes that are neither plants, animals, or fungi.

This school year, I wanted to give my unit on protists a little extra punch.  I wanted to make it as visual as possible, so I put together a brand new PowerPoint presentation that covers both the algae and the protozoans.  Wow!  It ended up being 99 slides long with handouts for my students of 19 pages.  I did break this up into two units of study, though.  I first covered the algae and gave a unit test on just algae, followed by a unit on protozoans.  

I packed the PowerPoint with color and as many cool photographs as possible.  

Once taught, this is material that needs reinforcement if I expect my students to remember it on test day.  I made a second PowerPoint that is just slide after slide of review questions.  My high school students like review games, so I put them into small groups and made a contest of it.  I would project a question and each group would take a turn at the answer until the question had been answered correctly.  I kept score and awarded a box of Little Debbie Santa Claus Brownies to the winning group.

And finally, we finished it all up with a lab on the living protists.  My students love to watch anything that moves under a microscope.  I purchased a culture of Paramecium, Euglena, Amoeba, Diatoms, Spirogyra, Volvox, and Stentor (my personal favorite!) Oddly enough, my students really enjoyed a mixed culture of 6 algae that came with a dichotomous key.  They had to find the 6 different algae in the culture and name them using dichotomous classification key.

All in all, the unit on Protists was not as bad as it seemed at first.  Most students escaped unharmed.

Kingdom Protista PowerPoint With Notes for Teacher and Student

Kingdom Protista Review PowerPoint

Lab:  The Living Protists

Teaching About Protists!

Excellent Short Videos of Protists

Just as my school was getting out for the Christmas break, I was finishing up a unit on the Protists with my biology classes.  I am very fortunate to have the use of an extremely well equipped high school lab, but before I took my students to the lab to complete my protist lab, I wanted some short video clips to use in the classroom during my lecture.  Most sites that host video are blocked at my school, but I was very pleasantly surprised to find several sites that I could access and use in my classroom.

Here are a few of the sites that I found.  What I liked the best was the short length of each clip.  With each of these sites, I could show 20-30 seconds of one organism and then move on to another organism.

Each of the sites listed below are free and the quality of the video is excellent.

Nikon Microscopy:  This was my favorite site.  Not only did it have the clips of the protists I was looking for, but it also has video clips of annelids, cnidarians, crustaceans, etc.  I'll be going back and using this site again and again.

Fun Science Gallery:  This site has 38 movies of bacteria, protists and freshwater multicellular organisms.  This site gives a few short sentences on particular structures to watch for as the video plays.

Natural History Museum Microbiology Video Collection:  All I can say about this site is just "Wow!!"  If you can't find what you are looking for here, it probably doesn't exist!

After teaching the about the protists in my classroom, I took my students to the lab for my 3-day lab on the protists.  Having used the short video clips in the classroom made my lab run smooth and easy.

Happy Holidays and Happy Teaching!