Russo Bio Class

This is a culminating project that I use for my unit on Metabolism.  It is based on the book/movie, “The Martian” and utilizes the science from the book to have students determine if they would be able to survive on Mars just like the character Mark Watney does.  Once students see the problem solving involved in this process, they are tasked with creating a proposal for NASA about the single best crop they should take to begin a colony on Mars. This project asks students to work collaborativel

Engage your Biology students with this activity that casts them as CDC scientists researching the best way to stop the spread of a deadly disease. Student groups will get to select from four different viruses in one of two locations in the world. Each group will then research specific information - as laid out in the instructions - and create a website to inform the public about the growing epidemic. Phase two of the project asks students to develop a strategic plan for curing or, at the very

Engage your Biology students with this activity that casts them as CDC scientists researching the best way to stop the spread of a deadly disease. Student groups will get to select from four different viruses in one of two locations in the world. Each group will then research specific information - as laid out in the instructions - and create a website to inform the public about the growing epidemic. Phase two of the project asks students to develop a strategic plan for curing or, at the very

Let your students flex their creative and artistic muscles with this project that has them create a visual display of the body's immune response in one of two ways. I outline the options for creating a hanging mobile or a graphic novel the describes the immune response as an analogy. I like to show a clip from "Osmosis Jones" as a way to get them to start brainstorming ideas. I include a very basic Sample Rubric.

Use the endangered Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus to help your students learn about how to identify reliable scientific sources. The key to this assignment is to be excited about your introduction of this organism and to not let on that the website is a hoax! I had my 10th graders super excited about the tree octopus and were intently researching for a majority of the class period until someone finally said, "This seems made up!" By utilizing Google drive, students can add their own ideas to