Download Ideas for PLTL activities

Ideas for PLTL activities
Paper-and-pencil activities:
 End of chapter problems: There are a variety of textbooks in NS 125 from
which you can borrow critical thinking questions or questions that ask students to
recall or explain important concepts.
 Fill in the labels: Use a photocopier to enlarge a figure from the text. Blank out
the labels and ask students to work together to fill the labels in from memory. In
some instances, it may be useful to blank out part of the illustration for students to
fill in (such as filling in chromosomes in a figure of mitosis or bases in an
illustration of DNA).
 Focused listing: As a group, students list all the important points they can
remember about a chosen concept. This can be used as a check for prior
understanding or misconceptions when beginning a session.
 Memory matrix: Create a matrix or table that requires students to fill in as many
recalled details as they can. For example, a memory matrix for cell organelles
may list several major organelles down the side, and across the top ask students to
recall physical shape and the function of each organelle.
 Categorizing grid: Students use a grid to categorize lists of items. They may, for
example, sort an example list containing, “starch, albumin, wax, keratin,
cellulose…” into the categories of Carbohydrates, Lipids, and Proteins. Or they
may use a matrix to sort the names of cell organelles into “found in Animal cells”
and “found in Plant cells.”
 Concept maps: Students can be given a short list of important vocabulary terms
from a chapter or a lecture presentation, cut them apart, and organize them into a
concept map on a larger sheet of paper. Arrows connecting terms should be
labeled so the connection is clear, such as, “Atoms ---bond to create --- >
Molecules”
 One-sentence summary: A good warm-up activity. Given a “who,” students
create a sentence that explains “who does what to whom (or what), when, where,
how, and why?” Example:
o Who?
Enzymes
o Does what?
break down or put together
o To whom (or what)? other molecules
o When?
when those molecules are present
o Where?
in the cell
o How?
by means of an active site shaped to fit a specific
substrate
o Why?
in order to lower the activation energy required for
the reaction.
 Analogies: Students create analogies comparable to the functions of biological
systems. For example, students can be asked to think of the cell as a city and
create city-like analogies for the organelles: mitochondria are like electric plants,
vesicles are like UPS trucks, nucleus is like a library, etc. They should have a
“because” to explain each analogy, and the analogies should be clearly related to

the functions, such as, “Vesicles are like UPS trucks because they deliver
packaged materials to specific places.”
Imagined dialogues: As an understanding check, students can anthropomorphize
biological systems and invent dialogues that express their understanding of the
system. For example, they could invent a dialogue between Chlorine and Sodium
as Chlorine “steals” an electron during ion formation and the formation of ionic
bonds, or imagine the dialogue between a ribosome and a strand of RNA during
translation.
Active learning:
 Class modeling: Give students roles to play and have them act out biological
processes such as chemical bonding, DNA transcription, RNA translation, etc.
They can be provided with a script, or, if their knowledge seems high enough,
have them figure out how to act out the process.
 Making and using models: With colored paper and scissors, students can create
physical models to manipulate. They could create models of chromosomes to
model mitosis and meiosis. Paper disks from hole punchers can be electrons to
“orbit” paper “atomic nuclei” to model different types of bonding.
 Card sorts: These are useful for an understanding check before or after an
activity. Cards with pictures or words are sorted into two or more given
categories. For example, unlabeled pictures of sugars, amino acids, etc. can be
sorted into stacks based on physical structure, or students can be asked to pick out
which ones are sugars, and should explain how they know.
 Ordering: Illustrations of important processes be cut from photocopied diagrams
and mixed up for students to put back in order. Meiosis, mitosis, photosynthesis,
cellular respiration, transcription, and translation all involve ordered processes.
Have students finish with a written summary explaining the process.