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Life science classroom activities, ready to run

Life science is full of terms students can recite without understanding them. In these structures they retrieve what they know, apply it to an example and explain it to a classmate, and you quickly see who really gets it.

They are already filled with questions on food chains, cells, adaptations, ecosystems and healthy living.

How a card works

  • Open it without an account. On the start screen you adapt the questions to your own class.
  • Save it with a free account: the preparation goes into My preparations, with your changes. Next time it is there in one click, no searching.
  • With Pro you build a whole lesson from My preparations: several structures in a row, with your instructions and timers.

29 ready-made structures

Active learning in life science

Life science is full of concepts, processes and connections: a food web, photosynthesis, the difference between a plant cell and an animal cell. Students often memorize the vocabulary without seeing how it fits together. Active learning structures push them to use the concepts, apply them and explain them.

Cooperative learning structures hand that explaining to the students. In Numbered Minds, every group member has to be able to give the answer, so the group makes sure everyone understands the connection.

Which structure for which part of the lesson?

Activate prior knowledge with Taking Turns: name an animal and what it eats, name an herbivore. Stand Up & Sit Down brings misconceptions into the open, for example about what a plant takes from the soil.

During the work phase, Numbered Minds and Written Thoughts work well: students discuss a why question and explain their answer. In Think, Write & Share, everyone writes on their own first, then the group compares, and one student reports for the group.

To wrap up, check knowledge with the Knowledge Quiz, or let groups give feedback on each other's posters or diagrams in a Gallery Walk.

What to watch for

Ask about connections instead of isolated facts: what happens if one link in the food chain disappears, why does a plant need light? Questions like that start a conversation; a question about a definition gets one answer.

Learning to learn in this subject

Three ways of learning studied in this very subject, each with the structure that makes it happen in class. The board tells the class what it is training.

  • Predict

    Predict – Observe – Explain

    Before the experiment everyone writes what will happen and why; only then watch, then explain.

  • Ask why it is so

    Five Whys: root cause analysis

    From «the plant wilts» five times «why?», until you reach osmosis or light.

  • Explain in your own words

    Inner & Outer Circle

    Explain the circulatory system four times, to a new partner each time; whoever explains it the fourth time knows it.

A scheme of the material helps as support; whoever fills it in from memory practises more than whoever copies it.

Sources: Fiorella & Mayer (2016), generative learning · Pressley et al. (1987), elaborative interrogation · Dunlosky et al. (2013), self-explanation

All ways of learning, with sources →

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