A great tool for review is this game called Kahoot. You may have heard of it or at least heard someone talking about it. Students play interactively with one another and compete to answer a series of questions the fastest and correctly (which is the hard to do at the same time). A question with 4 choices pops up on the screen and students have just the choices on their device. Here's the catch - the choices are shapes - not words. They must match the correct answer with the shape on their device and tap it. This is all happening while the most anxiety-driven countdown music is playing. It's a game of knowledge, speed, and relaxing all at the same time. The students love it and we often play it at school. Here are some pics of the winners (the top 5 get their scores shared) in both 3rd and 4th block last week. 

Our liver is an amazing organ. It is responsible for ridding our body of toxins and aids in digestion. We build up hydrogen peroxide (yeah, that stuff in the brown bottle we pour on cuts) in our cells that could harm us were it not for a tiny protein called CATALASE. Catalase is an enzyme that breaks down hydrogen peroxide into water and oxygen. It's doing it right now! We learned about enzymes and what they do for living things. There are 1000s of enzymes in our bodies all catalyzing different metabolic reactions. We are actually able to see catalase in action in the lab using chicken livers (I know, gross, right?). We tested the effect of temperature on enzyme activity and learned that in extreme temperatures the enzyme either didn't work at all or barely worked. We related this to maintaining a constant body temperature for homeostasis as well as what physiologically happens when our body temperature gets too high or too low. Check out the pics below. 

Have you ever wondered how much energy there is in the foods you eat? What if I told you that a single Hershey Kisses has enough energy to lift a full-size SUV 6ft off the ground? Would you believe me? Well...the students didn't at first either. However, they quickly learned how to convert energy between different units using dimensional analysis and see just how much potential energy there is in food. Crazy!! 

Students had to bring in a snack to eat during review but there was a twist - they had to figure out how much energy they consumed in Joules (a unit of energy) and figure out how many flights of stairs they would have to walk to "burn it off". While, there are more variables to burning off Calories (Joules) than just that, the concept is the same. Most students were surprised just how much work their body would have to do in order to burn off the Calories they consumed. Check out a few pictures from 4th block. 

Test day is always a bit stressful, but hopefully when we study together it helps calm the nerves. Here are some pictures of 3rd block questing each other before the test. Questioning is a great tool to use for review and to check understanding. Students are encouraged to ask each other questions to clarify understanding. 

In order to observe the osmosis, we conducted a lab to see what affect NaCl (salt) had on the mass of a potato. Students soaked their potatoes in different solutions of NaCl overnight and observed the next day. Data was collected in composition notebooks (just like real scientists do) then their final conclusions were shared in their lab reports. This gives students to see exactly how the movement of water in our cells is affected by the surrounding solution. We made connections like "Why can we not drink salt water?" "What happens when we place salt on icy roads?" "Why can't a shark live in a pond?". All of these reinforced the concept of osmosis and how water behaves in a cell. Check out these photos from