A Professional Development Initiative for Developing Approaches to Vocabulary Instruction With Secondary Mathematics, Art, Science, and English Teachers
This is the all-famous Jello Cell lesson. Students would be learning about cells and their components, properties and functions. Students use gelatin and pieces of fruit to make cell models of animal cells and/or plant cells. They will be able to describe the cells, organelles, functions, and tell the differences between plant and animal cells. For this lesson, I would have introduced key vocabulary and talked about important terms in a class discussion format. Then the students would do research in their text books and online to find out how to make their models. Students would pair up to build their cell models. Each pair would present to the class when they were finished. The lesson online includes discussion questions for the class, as an “explanation phase” (the 5 E’s format). The suggested evaluation is for students to come up with three questions that could be answered by looking at their cell model. I would probably also include a rubric for the cell models, which I would let the students see before-hand so they would know what I’m looking for in their models. This would be a great lesson plan for 8th grade science because it would be fun, and allow for creativity while learning new terms and the functions of cells.
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/lessonplans/programs/cello/
One Comment
ok, this lesson seems awesome! I might would have enjoyed science in school if i’d EVER had a lesson similar to this one. You are going to be a great teacher if you really do engage your students using fun learning activities such as this one. If students will learn just as much (if not more) with lessons like these, why would we assign them boring book work?