u/Large_End_2194

Hi everyone! I’m looking for some fun, outdoor environmental science labs that I could do to finish out the year. Our current “unit” is environmental policy and climate change, but I’m okay with just throwing in a few for fun labs to get them outside. One idea I had is to use the Merlin Bird ID app and have them use it to do some identification and stuff, but not entirely sure how to go about this yet. Any ideas for this?

Also would love to hear any fun outdoor activities you’ve done with your environmental science classes! I have mostly juniors and seniors and it’s more of an elective class so not everyone is super into science.

Thanks!

I taught freshman regular biology this year and our unit order felt a little weird. We’re having some retirements this year so there is opportunity to change it up for next year what order do you do your units?

Our unit order:

Trimester 1:

Unit 1: Scientific Method

Unit 2: Photosynthesis & Cell Respiration

Unit 3: Ecology (broken into 3 subunits)

Subunit 1: flow of energy (food chains, webs, etc)

Subunit 2: carbon cycle, ecological succession, carrying capacity

Subunit 3: biodiversity (HIPPO, ethograms (not even sure why we cover this???), biodiversity calculations)

Unit 4: “hierarchy of systems” (human body systems, enzymes, proteins, immunology all shoved at the end of the trimester)

Trimester 2:

Unit 1: meiosis and mitosis

Unit 2: genetics (Mendelian/non Mendelian, blood types, pedigrees)

Unit 3: DNA (replication, transcription, translation, mutations)

Unit 4: evolution, natural selection

Seems very spotty and all over the place. I feel like the units should build on each other more.

Just looking for any advice or thoughts as I think about restructuring things.