Skin Brochure

  To wrap up our unit about the skin, students created a skin brochure that could be used in a dermatologist's office.  The brochure would provide information about the layers of the skin, functions, of skin, and of course, the risk of skin cancer.
  Thanks to the computer teacher, students were able to use Publisher to make their brochures fancy and professional!

Illinois State Standards:

12.A.3a  Explain how cells function as “building blocks” of organisms and describe the require­ments for cells to live.

Objectives:

Students will:

-create a visually appealing brochure 

-identify the layers of skin

-list the functions of the skin

-explain the risk of skin cancer

Assessment:

Students were assessed based on the completeness and accuracy of their brochure using the following rubric:

Skeletal System Concept Maps

To wrap up our unit of the skeletal system, I teamed up with the computer teacher to help my students make concept maps of skeletal system vocabulary.  I like this project because it allows students to see how all parts of the skeletal system are connected and makes a good study guide for the chapter test.  Furthermore, it allows students to gain experience with concept maps while providing them with the opportunity to be creative.

Skeletal System Concept Map Assignment

Illinois State Standards:

12.A.3c. Compare and contrast how different forms and structures reflect different funtions (e.g., similarities and differences among animals that fly, walk, or swim; structures of plant cells and animal cells). 

Objectives:

Students will:

-create a concept map using skeletal system terms

-explain how parts of the skeletal system are dependent on each other

-create a useful study tool

Assessment:

Students were assessed based on whether or not they included all the required vocabulary.  Furthermore, I also evaluated how they connected each of the terms and the examples they provided.  The computer teacher also assessed students' concept maps for a computer grade.

Google Docs

As I mentioned, my class was super excited to create a modern version of Romeo & Juliet.  I wanted to get this project moving along because it will definitely be time consuming.  So on Friday, I set up each student with a Gmail account introduced them to GoogleDocs.  They were new to this feature of Google, but were eager to learn.  After creating a document with their small groups, I told them that I wanted them to finalize their script by Monday.  After leaving the computer lab, I was still apprehensive of how successful this would be.  Well, it is now Sunday and all groups have their scripts done on GoogleDocs so I am very pleased.  I look forward to talking to them tomorrow and getting their feedback.  If they thought it was efficient, I will definitely be using it again this year!

New Technology

So this year my school received 20 iPads.  On Friday, each teacher got to take home an iPad to explore and download some free apps.  Needless to say, the iPad kept me busy this weekend.  I found some fun apps that I am going to share with the other teachers at my school.  I think my favorite app that I found is call Educreations.  Basically, it allows you to record writing/drawing while speaking and save it.  Then someone else can go listen/watch your recording.  I thought this would be great for my middle school students.  Immediately, I thought of using it as an assessment tool in math.  I could have a student solve a problem and talk through it and save it.  Then I could go back and have a deeper understanding of how well the student comprehends the concept.  Students could also use this app to teach each other concepts.  Because as we discussed at our workshop last week, students retain the most information when they teach it to someone else :)