The attached document is a fun lesson activity that I made to help students learn about the process of cellular protein production. Typically, this concept is presented in a fairly dry manner as it involves a substantial amount of content and minutia. However, this lesson activity reviews the major steps in an exciting and engaging way and can be used as an introduction to the material, a check for understanding during the unit, or a final review. Essentially, students are placed in groups of four where each student represents a key organelle involved in protein production: the nucleus, the ribosome, the endoplasmic reticulum, and the Golgi body. Each student must carry out a task that emulates what the organelle actually does in nature. At the end of the activity, each group of students will have successfully made and transported three paper airplanes which represent completed proteins. This can be presented as a friendly race to further increase motivation and any mistakes that are made can be used as a segue into a discussion on mutations.
While creating this activity I learned that it isn’t enough to simply know and understand the material you will be teaching. From a teacher’s perspective, true knowledge and understanding are only attained when you’ve discovered a means to present the content in a way that is meaningful and interesting for the students. In addition to this, the knowledge a teacher has must be presented in a way that promotes and encourages the values and ideals of our society. In other words, a teacher’s understanding of the material must be supplemented by an attitude that fosters the core competencies presented in the BC curriculum. |
I created this activity to serve three purposes. First, the game is meant to educate students about evolution through hands-on activity. Second, the game aligns the presented content with the BC curriculum core competencies (communication, creative thinking, social responsibility). Lastly, the game is meant to make learning fun! As an example of this TRB Standard, this activity demonstrates my understanding of subject content and the methodology of its instruction. The students create animals using characteristics that I supply and that cover a wide range of complexity seen in the animal kingdom. Also, the random events that take place demonstrate my understanding of the various environmental pressures that influence a species’ evolution. This activity exemplifies the Standard by demonstrating my understanding of the curricular content and that I’m familiar with it in a way that allows me to apply engaging methodology.
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