After a holiday break you always wonder as a teacher how much have my students retained from last semester? An easy way to bring back in the human body unit, which lasted the whole semester, is to get students talking about the holidays because they will. So why not make the discussion both fun and informative. So when my students entered the classroom they looked at the board for the agenda and what they saw for the day was What did you do for the holidays? What activities did you and your family do over the break? Students sat down and at the bell settled to quiet as they waited for the me to tell them about my holiday. I quickly told them about my travels to Albuquerque and the awesome park I went to with adult sized swings, slides, slippery astro-turf hills etc. I talked about the altitude and how hard it was to breath at 5000 ft. I made sure to discuss how much fun the break was using science as the base of the conversation.
Then I opened the floor to them. They understood by my modeling that science was very much integral to their story or anecdote. Examples: "I ate a lot of food." I asked them how did this have to do with digestion and any other organ system? They explained fat, protein, energy, cellular respiration etc. "I got a new bicycle for Christmas, it was exercise which is about muscular and skeletal but also I worked up a sweat which has to do with nervous and endocrine and even integumentary." They just got better and better from then. This was a great way for them to share their great stories but also have a review of the human body which is important because our next unit is humans in space. So when we were done talking about the holidays we transitioned to space. Now I said "How would things be different if you received these gifts or performed these activities on the ISS?" The conversation was great and engaging and we covered three topics in one fell swoop.
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