activities for teaching biology

 This overview of energy, cellular respiration and photosynthesis summarizes important concepts and common misconceptions.  It also suggests a sequence of learning activities to overcome misconceptions, develop student understanding of important concepts, and relate these concepts to familiar topics such as breathing, food, body weight, and plant growth.

The attached file has the key concepts and suggested learning activities.

The questions in this worksheet/discussion activity help students understand that a large part of a plant’s mass consists of water, most of the biomass comes from carbon dioxide, and minerals from the soil contribute only a tiny amount of the plant’s mass. The first attached file has the Student Handout and the second attached file has the Teacher Notes.

This worksheet/discussion activity presents a structured sequence of questions to challenge students to explain why plants that grow in the light weigh more than the seeds they came from, whereas plants that grow in the dark weigh less than the seeds they came from. The first attached file has the Student Handout and the second attached file has the Teacher Notes.

Students use puzzle pieces representing the components of the equations for photosynthesis and aerobic cellular respiration and answer questions about these processes. The attached file has the Student Handout.

In this worksheet/discussion activity, students compare aerobic cellular respiration and alcoholic fermentation and then interpret evidence to figure out why a micro-brewer’s beer has no alcohol.  The first attached file has the Student Handout and the second attached file has the Teacher Notes.

This discussion/worksheet activity helps students to understand the relationships between food molecules as a source of energy, cellular respiration, physical activity, and changes in body weight.  The first attached file has the Student Handout and the second attached file has the Teacher Notes.

The questions in this worksheet/discussion activity help students understand the relationship between cellular respiration, O₂, CO₂, and breathing. The first attached file has the Student Handout and the second attached file has the Teacher Notes.

This overview provides a sequence of learning activities to help students understand that proteins and DNA are not just abstract concepts in biology textbooks, but rather crucial components of our bodies that affect functions and characteristics that students are familiar with. Students learn about how proteins contribute to the digestion of food and to characteristics such as albinism, sickle cell anemia and hemophilia. Then, students learn about the relationship between the genetic information in DNA and the different versions of these proteins. The discussion, web-based, and hands-on learning activities presented are appropriate for an introductory unit on biological molecules or as an introduction to a unit on molecular biology. 

The attached file has the key concepts and suggested learning activities.

This game reviews introductory chemistry, including organic compounds and chemical reactions.

In the lab, Investigating Osmosis, students make predictions about the effects of osmosis and design an experiment to test these predictions. The experimental approach is similar to the diffusion activity, but focused specifically on osmosis.

Download Student Handout: PDF format or Word format

Download Teacher Preparation Notes: PDF format or Word format