See LIFE in Life Science
I first started teaching high school biology almost 30 years ago. As is usual for most new teachers, my main focus in the early years was getting through the terms and topics of the course.
Early in my teaching career I was proudly explaining, to a good friend, all the activities that I do with my biology classes. It was a list of things that included, dissections of preserved animals and insects, manipulation of plastic models and simulation kits, textbook and workbook assignments, digital software and computer apps connected to biology. Then my friend asked me a very innocent but what would prove to be a career changing question. “What actual living things do the students study?” The question was so obvious, yet had been totally missed by me in my early career as a teacher. Biology is the study of life. Where was the study of real life in my course? There had been embarrassingly none. Something had to be done. Going forward, my slogan from that chance encounter became, “Put the Life Back in Life Science!”
This has been my advice now to all new and veteran Biology/Life Science teachers. Show students living things as much as you can during the course. There is no substitute for actually watching living things move, interact with their environment, and grow. No amount of textbook readings or computer apps can better explain the true miracle of life than life itself. If you are a new teacher or a veteran teacher looking to add more “life” to your course, I have created a list below of the many activities/experiments (most will cost you almost nothing) that can help you start to achieve this task.
Bring in seeds (all types) to class. Let students grow something. Let them watch the process of germination first hand. It truly is a wonder to watch a sedentary, almost lifeless, seed grow into a plant. Let them learn, for real, what almost all plants need early on to survive.
If you have microscopes in your room, bring in samples of pond or puddle water to class. Let students see all the microscopic life that exists in all the small places around them. There is a “miniature serengeti preserve” of life forms in small samples of water. Use this lesson to let them marvel at it all.
Bring in samples of soil from under a pile of leaf litter. Most students don’t know that soil is teeming with life. In small pans, students can observe all the living things that exist beneath their feet in the soil line. If your class has a dissecting microscope, you will be able to spot even more life in that small sample of dirt.
Buy a mushroom, butterfly, or praying mantis kit. Let your students see the fascinating lifecycle of these organisms outside of the pages of a textbook or magazine. Observing a caterpillar change into a pupa (chrysalis), then into an adult butterfly, is an event all students should be exposed to in a class that studies life.
Start an indoor herb garden. How better to connect students to life, then showing them how it is related to many of their meals. Chives, mint, basil, cilantro and parsley are all great plants to get started with and will almost guarantee growing success for your class.
Have your students set up an aquarium in the classroom. This activity will allow students to learn about all the necessary components in the ecosystem of fish to keep them alive and happy.
These are some of the ways I have incorporated life into the life science classroom over the years. I believe that my students have left my room at the end of the year with a better understanding of the true nature of life and even more importantly an appreciation of it in the world around them.
