Spring is in the air

 Allright everybody, sing along after me...Spring is in the air, tra la la da doo de da....

What a perfect time of year to teach plant and human reproduction.  While many newly qualified teachers (NQT's) aka beginning teachers (BT's) shudder at the thought of having to talk about "the birds and the bees" to a class of thirty giggling teenagers with hormones surging (or about to) through their bodies, those who approach this topic with the right attitude and appropriate level of humour ensure that an enjoyable learning experience is had by all.

My survival guide to this topic is...
1) start with plant reproduction and disect a flower
2) plant reproduction has a natural progression on to the next section of the topic, human reproduction
3) before starting human reproduction, have a class brainstorm on the "ground rules"
4) referring to number 3, never reveal any personal information
4) where appropriate, use humour
5) make use of videos starring real people, with real bodies who have real life stories to tell
6) provide your students with correct information so that they can make informed decisions for themselves
7) play the STI game to show how easily infections can be transferred
8) give each of them a raw egg "baby" to mind for a week, they love the experience, have tales to tell and besides, the egg "baby" turns out to be a pretty good contraceptive...yes, really!

The keen bunnies in class will be thrilled to be given the opportunity to use a scalpel and tweezers to dissect a flower, if you teach little terrors blunt the scalpels blades beforehand, they'll never know!  Obviously count them in and out.  Get your students to stick the flower in their book and label it, key words on the board can help the less able ones.

If using scalpels isn't an option for your students, click on the image below for a very cool model of the flower that students can cut, stick and colour.  This was designed by Mike Beester, Edgemead High School.

and the cartoon below always gets a laugh...

 and clear, simple video on the growth of a pollen tube

There is a wonderful though now quite dated book called  Living Things: Certificate of Secondary Education Biology by V. Slaughter and published by Edward Arnold.  The copy that I have dates from 1980. If you can get your hands on a copy of it then do and clasp it firmly. It is a superb book, the drawings, explanations and questions are first rate and it covers all basic aspects of plant and human biology.  Highly, highly recommended. See here for some pdf's from the book, it is available for sale from Amazon for only £2

So on to puberty...I like to show this video produced originally for the NEMO Science Centre from Fonztv. 

It is a 3 minute animation which seems odd initially but certainly gets the message across of the difficult journey through puberty showing the progression from "ugly ducklings" to emerging "beautiful swans"and a paragraph about a person called Chris outlining changes occuring to him/her during puberty, after reading this students discuss and decide if the story related to refers to a Christopher or a Christine. 

Here's a couple of info, colour in and ques sheets from User Friendly Resources.  There are many animations online relevant to male and female reproductive organs, particularly good is the BBC puberty demo and I quite like this animation of the menstrual cycle from The American Medical Association.

The BBC Human Body series, episode titled "Raging teens" has a wonderful true to life account of how teenagers feel and the changes that they undergo during puberty, this is also available to purchase from Amazon This award winning series is presented by The Right Honourable Professor Lord Robert Winston.

So...onto the birds and the bees and what better way to start than with this Mitsubishi car ad.

and that wonderful opening scene from "Look who's talking" featuring the voice of Bruce Willis.
and "The inside story" from Discovery Health which touches on the science of it all. There are clear info and diagrams available to purchase from User Friendly Resources on the start of new life.

It'll be yet another well deserved plug for the BBC as I recommend "An Everyday miracle" which shows the development of a foetus in the womb which culminates with, by far the quietest and seemingly easiest labour that I have ever seen or heard of!

As regards contraceptives, no doubt your local family planning association will be delighted to chat to your students about the different methods of contraceptive available to them. Whenever I teach this topic I issue each student with an egg to mind for the week, they name it, draw a face and hair on it.  As part of the task I suggest that they don't leave the egg unattended and need to find a "babysitter" for it if they're playing sports etc... if possible they keep a diary of what they did with their egg and how easy or difficult the experience was.  Usually they find it a difficult task and a class discussion gets the message across that despite being a difficult task, it would be considerably more so if their egg was a real life baby who cried, needed feeding, nappy changing etc..

Something else that works well for teenagers is having other teenagers through the local family planning association come into school and talk to the students about the difficulties (and they are usually difficulties) that they have had as a result of being a parent during their teenage year.  This banned commerical highlights one of the difficulties of parenting...

The Brook Advisory Centre, UK devised an interactive game called "The Body fluids game", it's pretty straightforward to carry out with a class of students as the starch and iodine solutions required are readily available.  Without question "The Body fluids game" gets the message across as to how easily STI's can be transmitted from one person to another.

Some of you may have heard of the very popular "Grapevine Sex education game" which has now been relaunched as "Sexplanation" from the National Youth Agency (UK)

So I'll conclude with the Johnny condom song this was created in 1997 by the Frank Foundation and features puppets from the Spitting Image crew.

Sing along after me...Johnny condom, Johnny condom...tra la la da doo de da....

quiet now please

"Quiet now please..." requested a teacher at the beginning of a whole school assembly, which may sound like just another ordinary day...but no!  The assembly was attended by The Edge radio station and unknown to Ms X her requests were recorded (gasp, shock horror!) and streamed live to a DJ, Dominic Harvey who subsequently passed it to a colleague who produced this wonderful "song" which was then aired on their radio station.  I have nothing but compliments for Ms X who was polite, persistent, assertive and well spoken (she has a wonderful Scottish lilt).  I like this audio version and think that Grant Brodie did a damn good job producing it.

Go on press play...you know you want to!

You remember Roald Dahl, the writer of the very popular "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory"?  One of the charachters who won a golden ticket was Violet Beauregarde, within no time at all she had ballooned (literally!) and resembled an oversized blueberry.

Click here for a poem about the chewing gum addicted Violet, which is wonderful for handing out to students to write out if they continually chew gum in class.  Very old scool, I know! and on the same note, click here for a document with a valuable lesson in time management, again it can be written out for students who frequently arrive late to your lessons.

Amongst the best student management advise manuals out there is "Getting the buggers to behave" by Sue Cowley and video clips with sensible and realistic suggestions for managing students here.

Talking of old scool, here's a glimpse of how it used to be..

Have a look and a laugh at "Seven periods with Mr Gormsby", the satirical comedy series from New Zealand featuring an "old school" teacher who isn't at all politically correct.  It's bloody hilarious!

and Summer Heights High, the Award winning Australian mockumentary starring the multi talented Chris Lilley as three different charachters, guaranteed most of you will have taught a Jonah or twenty.Available from Amazon here

Jonah Takalua	Mr G	Ja'mie King

Have a great week, I'll be sipping champagne at a wedding.  Hope my students behave for the reliever!

rocket scientist

"Miss, I wanna be an astronaut"

Hey, don't we all!  So, how do you reply when a student of average academic ability tells you of their lifetime goal, their dream for the future?  To become a doctor, professional footballer, rocket scientist...?  However unrealistic it may seem to us as teachers or parents, a dream is a dream, without dreams we are nothing, so without question most teachers encourage their students to pursue their personal goal(s) and bring it as close to reality as is possible.  Although I will add that I feel it is so important to open our students eyes to the range of options available to them, so that they don't set themselves up for failure.

For those budding astronauts, NASA offers a number of scholarships open to students from all around the world, local observatories give students the opportunity to catch a glimpse of outer space and students can make the most of hands on activities and learn from displays at the space exploration section of most Science Museums.  For those millionaires amongst us, (that'll rule out the teachers then), good ol' Sir Richard Branson has made a trip into space a possible reality through his Virgin Galactic Space program. It'll set you back.$200,000 (US).  If I win lotto, I'll be online and have my flight booked in a tick.

There are a huge number of reference sites to learn about the planets, I'll start with this mnemonic.

My 

Very 

Easy 

Method 

Just 

Speeds 

Up 

Naming 

Planets 

(although given that now Pluto is no longer a planet, this mnemonic is out of date but no doubt, 

your students can think up a mnemonic of their own for the 8 planets)

and I recommend this simple overview of the solar system from CELS at Nottingham Trent University and this very cool 3D viewer from ForgeFX which also has a brief bit of info on the planets and one that I suggest to students for their own research is A multimedia tour of the Solar System.  As mentioned already, there are many more...the NASA site is obviously a good starting point.

If you like the look of the screenshot above then definitely be sure to view the Earth (or the moon) from different perspectives using this superb, truly excellent Earth and Moon viewer has been compiled by John Walker using information provided from satellites and a number of other sources.  It ranks in my top ten of favourite urls, no doubt about it!

Have you got a sense of humour? Then have a laugh at this video clip with "proof" that the Moon landings in 1969 were faked.

Moving swiftly on... we have just passed the 41st anniversary of the first moon landing.  July 20th 1969 was the momentous day as can be seen from this post 1969 edited version of a copy of The Times newspaper. 

and here is a powerpoint that I put together on the moon landings with evidence for and against them being a fictitious Hollywood movie.

And some useful moon related resources, some of which will lend themselves well to collaborative learning experiences for your students.

and there's more...

Science concept cartoons open up more possibilities for creative, collaborative learning, leave your students  in groups to discuss and debate their thoughts and ideas using the concept cartoons as a focal point, available from Amazon here

and this fabulous computer animated video clip of the Rover landing on Mars, produced by NASA, no surprises there!

and an excellent resource document "To Mars and beyond" which was put together by School Program Officers at the National Museum of Australia and The Melbourne Museum.

Astronomy is such a fun topic to teach, although I rarely find that I "teach" it as such but my students come up with questions which inevitably lead to more questions that they discuss and research by themselves individually or in groups. Exploration and knowledge of "what's out there" is akin to finding a black hole and being unable to escape as a result of the pull it has on you and the endless myriad of questions that develop.

image from http://jila.colorado.edu/~ajsh/insidebh/intro.html

creativity is crucial

"Schools kill creativity"

"Creativity is as important in education as literacy and we should treat it with the same status"

"If you are not prepared to be wrong you will never come up with anything original"

"We are educating people out of their creative capacities"

                                                                                             Sir Ken Robinson

Watch and listen to creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson who challenges the way we are educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.

His talk could also double as a stand up comedy act, it is a highly recommended must watch video.

There are many more videos of talk worth watching on TED, the site for videos of talks with "ideas worth spreading."

Have a look at this movie "The Hero 2, a movie about someone you know, or you". for top notch originality and creativity.

This wonderfully original, innovative and creative film is the second viral film that was used by the Swedish   broadcasting company Radiotjanst to bring peoples attention to broadcast fees and thank them for paying it. The ad reminds people what is good about nationalised tv and the "hero" can be anyone, just upload their photo.  No doubt you can find a use for it in your classroom.  Make your own film here.

Thank crunchie its Friday! Have a great week!