Human Body: The Skeletal, Muscular and Integumentary Systems

Interactive Notebook Pages for Your Human Body Unit

Here is the next set of pages for a biology or anatomy/physiology unit on the human body.  I am very pleased at how this set turned out!  It is a set of 33 students pages on the skeletal, muscular and integumentary systems. The pages can be used in so many different ways.  If you are into interactive note booking these pages will make excellent additions.  I most often use these for warm ups and homework assignments.  They can also be used for tutoring, review and reinforcement, and for your sub folders.

The following images will give you a good idea of what is included.

Click image to view product.

Many of the pages have great pictures and diagrams to enhance student learning and retention of concepts.  Other pages (without diagrams) have questions that require the student to use the skills of comparing, contrasting, analyzing, critical thinking, writing and explaining.

As stated above, this set includes only the skeletal, muscular and integumentary systems.  Specific titles can be seen in the images below.

Also on the topic of the human body is a set of 19 students pages called "Introduction to the Human Body."

You can view all of my interactive notebook products by clicking this link.

Have fun teaching!

Human Body Interactive Notebook Pages: A Teaching Method That Works For Me!

The new trick in my teaching arsenal this year has been the use of a "warm-up" notebook. These pages go by many names:  Warm ups, bell ringers, interactive notebooks, do-nows, exit slips.  Use whatever name you want, but know this ... This technique is effective and student retention of the subject matter has soared!

I am now writing and developing a set of pages for "The Human Body."  Two sets are now ready:

• Introduction to the Human Body (19 Students Pages)
• Skeletal, Muscular and Integumentary Systems (33 Pages)

For this blog post, I'll focus on the first set, Introduction to the Human Body. (For blog posts on my other sets of interactive notebook pages, simply type in "interactive notebooks" into the search box at the top of my blog.)  

This is the first year that I have introduced this technique into my classes, and I have been most pleasantly surprised by the response of my students.  There is no moaning and groaning in my classroom,,,, the students are actually enjoying this! We are calling this a "warm up" notebook in my class.  My students do these pages at the beginning of each class period, and often carry home additional pages to complete for homework.  Many of the students have taken great pride in their notebooks, going above and beyond to create amazing notebooks.  All of the students who at putting in at least some effort are commenting that studying has become an easier task and they are getting better grades as a result.  

As I stated above, I have just begun to development the pages for the human body.  The following images will provide you with some details of this set.

The student pages are half-page sizes.  Two warm ups are printed on one page to help you save paper.  There is no elaborate cutting, gluing, or folding required.  You simply print the pages and cut them in half.  A teacher answer key is provide for each and every student page.

This set includes 19 student pages.  The specific titles can be seen below.

I have written these warm ups to be used with my first year Biology classes, but the pages have a good range of "easy to difficult."  This makes them usable by both middle school and high school teachers.

Thanks for stopping by my blog.  I know that we are all getting excited that summer is just around the bend!

What Will You Do For Earth Day?

There's not much time left to plan!  Earth Day is quickly approaching on April 22!

Has Earth Day slipped up on you this year?  If you are like me, end of course testing is quickly approaching and there is hardly any time left to squeeze in anything extra.  But the nature lover in me just can't let Earth Day go by without a mention in my science classes.  Surely we can find 10-15 minutes on April 22 to celebrate Planet Earth.  Here are some fresh ideas for your science classroom that require little to no preparation time.

First, I have a FREE Earth Day PowerPoint in my TpT store.  It is about the history of Earth Day and what led to the creation of Earth Day over 40 years ago.  The PowerPoint is relatively short, and can be viewed in about 10 minutes.  All you have to do is download it and play it.  Easy-peasy!

Click this image to download my free PowerPoint.

Next, I have just been introduced to the most fabulous site.  It is called Nature Works Everywhere and is sponsored by The Nature Conservancy.  It is packed full with the most wonderful videos, each of which is accompanied by free downloadable lesson plans.

From the Nature Works Everywhere site:  "Nature Works Everywhere gives teachers, students and families everything they need to start exploring and understanding nature around the globe alongside Nature Conservancy scientists—interactive games, and interactive lesson plans that align to standards and can be customized for each classroom."

I love that the videos are relatively short.  They are extremely interesting and cover a variety of topics and concepts.  You can't go wrong by showing one of these in your class on Earth Day.

Click image to view these free lessons.

Finally, don't forget that there is an official Earth Day website.  You can check the site for events happening in your area.

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!

Teaching Fungi? Interactive Notebook Pages and Warm Ups Will Help!

What have I learned about interactive notebooks, warm ups and bell ringers during my first year of using them?

• Time management is so important!  If you are not careful, this can consume way too much of your class time.
• Utilize to the best of your ability, the first 5-10 minutes of your class.  Don't get bogged down in classroom chores.  Get your students right to work every single day.  A short warm up or bell ringer each day will get students working, while you are taking care of "stuff."
• Reviewing a small amount of information each day has increased retention of information for my students.
• The best comment ever from a student?  "These have really helped me remember the information for the test."

I began this journey at the beginning of this school year, and I can honestly say that I wish I had started this years ago.  Each year our class time seems to get shorter, and we have more information we are required to cover.  It seems to me that each year brings more and more interruptions to my class time.  

My goal at the beginning of the school year?  I wanted to find a way to better utilize each valuable minute of instruction time.  These activities (interactive notebooks and bell ringers) have accomplished that for me.  And added bonuses include:  (1) My students actually seem to enjoy them!  (2) The pages make great homework assignments.  (3) I can leave them in my sub folder for emergencies.  (4) The completed warm up notebook provides a perfect way to review for my semester exam.

Note:  This is just the latest in a long line of blog posts on this topic.  Use the search bar at the top of my blog to search for the other posts about interactive notebooks.

OK, so I need to get the topic of this particular blog post.  I have just finished using this technique to cover my unit on the Fungi.

I developed a set of 16 bell ringer pages to use with my unit.  Some of the pages were used at the beginning of my class as bell ringers, while other pages were used for homework assignments.  But all pages went into the warm up notebook that I require each student to keep.  Here are the highlights:

I have uploaded this set of interactive notebook pages on the fungi into my TpT Store.  

All of my interactive notebook sets can be view by clicking this image.

What's next? We are studying the protists now in my class.  I am am building a set of bell ringers to cover the algae and the protozoans.

It's February ... And That Means Daphnia Love is in the Air!

This is the PERFECT lab for a high school biology class on Valentine's Day!

I soooo look forward to this lab each and every year.  Measuring the heart rate in Daphnia is FUN, is fairly easy to do, allows our biology students to work with living organisms in the lab, and perhaps most importantly, it provides an outstanding situation for having our students design and implement their own experiment.

Are you nervous about "student-designed experiments"?  Don't be!  If properly trained and instructed on the front end, the students will surprise you with their creativity and passion for designing an experiment.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Let me go back to the beginning....

Daphnia are tiny crustaceans, closely related to a shrimp. They are often called "water fleas." They are small, but not microscopic.  They can be seen with the naked eye, but you will need a dissecting microscope to view the beating heart. Daphnia can be purchased from any of the companies that sell lab supplies and equipment. Since Daphnia are arthropods, they demonstrate the three major arthropod characteristics: exoskeleton, jointed appendages, and segmented body. The exoskeleton is clear, allowing the student to easily view the heart. Daphnia are ectotherms and their body temperature changes with the surrounding environment.  This further means that there is a direct relationship between the internal body activities and the external temperature of the water in which it lives.

This sets the stage for the first part of our experiment.  I have my students carry out an experiment where they measure the change in heart rate when Daphnia are exposed to different temperatures.  I provide the procedure, and the student simply follows the instructions and carries out the lab.  The Daphnia are exposed to three different temperatures, and the student counts the number of heart beat per minute in each environmental condition.

Students carry out my procedure, graph their results, and answer my questions.  On Day 2, the fun begins!  It is time for the students to design their own experiment!  They are asked to design an experiment to test the effect of caffeine on the heart rate of Daphnia.  The students must state a hypothesis, describe their experimental and control groups, carry out the experiment, collect their data, graph their data, and come to a conclusion based on their data. 

The student-designed experiment will take some time.  I require my students to write their experiment and submit it to me for approval before they begin. Once approved, they carry out their experiment and write a formal lab report. The best learning occurs as the student is carrying out their experiment.  They invariably realize that their procedure is flawed, and they must revise, revise, and revise until they get it right.

For my honors and AP students I require that they also complete a worksheet on how to calculate the Q10 temperature coefficient.

And this is what we do to celebrate Valentine's Day in my biology classroom.  Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

In my TpT Store: "Measuring the Heart Rate of Daphnia" contains handouts for all parts of this experiment, including the student designed experiment and the Q10 worksheet.  Teacher Guide included.