A Year in Review: A Science Teachers Reflection: Quarter 2

I think that looking back on the year is so important. For me it opens my eyes and allows me to truly see my strengths and weaknesses. I see the possibilities for next year because I read over my little sticky notes I wrote every day, and put in a jar throughout the year. I also look over the pictures, this puts everything into perspective. I have a long way to go. I still have a lot of room to grow and I plan on making next year a huge leap forward. A few weeks of heavy reflection, a month of relaxing and letting go and then a few weeks of assembling new lessons for next year. Summer.

My reflection continues. The second quarter was all about the Circulatory, Respiratory, Muscular, Skeletal and Integumentary systems. Built into this unit was humans in space and work. This quarter was no longer fraught with learning names and building a community but rather getting students to stay interested in the human body. The first semester always feels very long every year with a lot of vocabulary and heavy with diagrams, so to make things a little more interesting I incorporated a lot of student choice and creative projects. Design and draw a superhero, using real science, justify how super heroes can exist. They built a lot of models using the makerspace, dissected a chicken foot and a Dyson vacuum cleaner and made analogies between them and the human body. It was a fun quarter. Just some of the myriad of student-driven activities that took place, follow.

Mission to space: Creating a Manned Space Station or Colony- Students used their research on how humans survive in space, and what does it mean to be a "Goldilocks planet" and designed either a manned space station or planetary colony explaining how all the essentials of life would be accommodated.

Design a working model: Lungs, heart, kidneys- Students created models to demonstrate the exchange of gases, the flow of blood, and the removal of toxins in the kidneys. They could use anything in the makerspace but it had to be 3D and fully explained. These pictures are of their designs-then they acted out the processes in person.

Create a model of the human hand-muscles, bones, tendons, ligaments-Students used paper, straws, and anything else they could find to make a working model/robotic hand based on the movement of the muscles and bones in the human hand.

Chicken Foot Dissection- The first dissection of the year. Students opened up the chicken foot and discovered first hand (literally) how tendons, ligaments, joints, muscles and bone work together to make a chicken foot move.

Dyson Vacuum Dissection: To have a fun way to make a comparison of technology and innovation to Skeletal and Muscular Systems, or how our latest products are often modeled off of the structure of the human body, students took apart Dyson vacuum cleaners, and then put them back together, writing and drawing a detailed lab report. I ordered these from Dyson and then shipped them back. All free.

Superhero Characters- The culminating activity for the human body was for students to use their knowledge of all of the body systems and understanding of how to enhance them and make them better. How can muscle get stronger? How can super heroes leap and jump even fly? What modifications will need to be made in order for them to do this? Students designed using research every aspect of their superheroes mutations. Then wrote stories about them and how they fight crime etc.