Modeling Enzyme Activity with Pool Noodles

Enzymes and how they function is such vital concept to understand for AP Biology, but it can be challenging to understand something that you can't actually see.  Last year was the first time we worked with pool noodles trying to demonstrate how enzymes work. Here's the blog post about it. I thought it went well and decided to do it again this year. Since last year, I have discovered Expo neon window markers.  This year, instead of labeling our pool noodle enzymes on white boards, students just wrote right on their lab tables. It looked fabulous!

First Day of Physical Science (Part 2)

Today was actually the first day of Physical Science.  I teach this class at a homeschool consortium that started today, so it is certainly falls into the category of a non-traditional classroom.  I only see this class for one 90 minute period a week, and I design the class with all hands-on labs to complement whatever chapter/topic they are reading and studying at home.

After we finished with our team building activity with Legos and clue cards that I blogged about earlier here, we moved onto the Mini Metric Olympics. I used the direction cards from this post on Math = Love. The only thing that I had to do besides gathering materials was create an answer sheet that would fit into their notebooks.  I also wanted them just to find their percent error, so I only included a column for that, not error.

The kids loved the activity and I actually overheard one of the students say, "This class is fun," as her group was moving from one station to another. That's a win in my book!

Lots of measuring going on...

...and estimating too.

First Day Plans for AP Bio

Although for the last two years I had been starting AP Bio with a lemonade lab (after brief introductions), I decided we needed a change this year. I loved the practice with experimental design students got, but the lab itself didn’t add anything to the content of the class. Through the AP Biology Facebook community, I saw a water lab that helped introduce statistics. They'll perform several trials to determine the number of drops of water, water with soap, or rubbing alcohol that will stay on a penny without spilling over.  Not only does this lab give statistics practice, but also fits with the current content--biochemistry. Over the summer, students read the water chapter and this lab allows some review of this material.

I won't include the lab document since it isn’t mine to share, but I did make a google sheet to accompany it. This is the link to the google sheet I made for students to put their data. I put all of the formulas in for them this time, since I wanted to focus on the stats themselves. I also combined their data to get sample sizes large enough for +/- 2SEM to work for the 95% confidence interval. We’ll do one more lab activity where I give the formulas before I task them with an inquiry lab and they have to do the stats on their own.

I do start the class with quick introductions to me and to the class itself. This year the introduction will come through a Kahoot! I also have students fill out a google form to help me get to know them better. Then we jump into our lab. I'm also using a new way to split kids into lab partners. In the past I have let them choose partners, but it doesn't always work well. This time they'll pick a card and figure out their lab group and lab table. The colored cards will each be on a different table. It'll also be a quick check of how their summer learning went.

Prepping the Classroom

We’ve been allowed back in the building, so I’ve been working on prepping the classroom for students. One of the first items I had to work on was putting together the computer. Fortunately, last year I put numbers on all of the wires and took pictures before unplugging all of the connections and storing it away. It made putting it all back together so much easier. Last year was a guessing game (and it took a few guesses to get it right).

Last year I had made the classroom bulletin board the AP Biology FRQ word wall,  but decided that this year, the word wall would create a boarder above the windows.  I needed to add a few more words, and fortunately Cheryl Ann Hollinger had posted FRQ key words with definitions for the AP Biology community. I chose several words that we didn’t already have, put them into the same format as the existing words, printed and laminated them. I put them up with sticky stuff--and so far all the words have stayed up. I realized today that it’s hard to take a picture of a wall with windows on a sunny day!

Another of my projects was curtains for the door windows. During lock-down drills we have to cover those long, skinny windows. What we had been using was a line of construction paper tapped together. This summer one of my colleagues pinned a cute classroom door window curtain idea. That was the inspiration. I bought a pack of fabric strips at Walmart and started sewing. In the pinned blog, the person had used a dowel and drawer pulls for the curtain rod. Since we use this room for science and math I decided it would be easier and more subject specific to use a ruler for the curtain rod and binder clips to hold it in place. I’d like to be able to pull the curtains further away from the window, so I’m planning to buy command hooks with metal hooks as tie-backs.

The last thing I tried wasn’t actually a room prep, but experimenting with pens that will write on our lab tables. When we work on review games and other modeling activities, I want students to be able to use their tables as their canvas. I’ve seen pictures of classrooms where teachers were using them and thought it would be a fun addition to the classroom. I ordered Expo neon window dry erase markers as well as Versachalk chalk markers. Both types worked well. In the picture at the top of this post, “Welcome to” was written with the expo marker and the rest was made with the chalk markers. I decided to leave the writing on the desk for a couple of days to see how difficult it would be to get the writing off of the table. I had to resort to a magic eraser for the chalk, but when I only left it on for two hours, it washed right off. We’ll just be sure to wipe the desks down by the end of class. I love the vibrancy of both and can't wait to use these markers in class.