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What's In a Name - A Study of Biological Prefixes and Suffixes



Want your students to succeed in your biology class?  Start by having them learn these prefixes and suffixes!

The new vocabulary words in a first year life science or biology class can be overwhelming.  However, many of the vocabulary words contain either a prefix or a suffix that will help the student understand the meaning of the word.  This assignment will help to familiarize your students with many of the common prefixes and suffixes used in biology.  This may seem difficult at first, but once the student learns these prefixes and suffixes, it will be of great benefit to them as the year progresses.

This document contains two separate products:
1.  What's In A Name Activity Wroksheet
2.  Quiz on Biological Prefixes and Suffixes

The "What's In a Name" activity is a four page worksheet with answer key for the teacher.  The student will learn 50 prefixes and 30 suffixes that are commonly found in many biological terms.  There are 44 problems on this worksheet.

For example:  What does the term "polysaccharide" mean?
Answer:  "Poly" means "many" and "sacchar" means "sugar".  Therefore a polysaccharide is a compound composed of many sugars.

Other problem examples:  What term means "a study of small forms of life"?
Answer:  "Micro" means "small".  "Bio:" means "life".  "Logy" means "a study of".  The term that means "a study of small forms of life" is "microbiology".

There are sufficient practice problems to help the student begin to master these prefixes and suffixes.

Also included is a short quiz.  I require my students to memorize these prefixes and suffixes.  To check to see if they are studying, I use this short quiz.  There are 50 questions/problems on this quiz.  It, too, comes with an answer key.

This is one of the science skills that I stress from the beginning of the year until the end.  You will not regret teaching your students how to break words apart to decipher their meaning.


Measurement Madness! (Reinforcement for Metric Ruler and Metric Conversions)



(Reinforcement Using a Metric Ruler and Completing Metric Conversions)


Last week, two things happened that were the inspiration for this new product:  (1) I had to be absent and knew that I would have a sub in my room.  I needed a good assignment to leave for my students to complete in my absence, and (2) I was shocked to discover that some of my HIGH SCHOOL students still had difficulty using a metric ruler properly and converting from one unit to another.



The worksheet begins.....

Students make observations about their ruler.
Students must draw lines of a give length.
Students must measure the lines that are already drawn on the worksheet.






Page 2.....

Students use a ruler to measure the sides of a 2-dimensional object.
Students determine the area of the figure in both centimeters and millimeters.








Page 3....

Students us a ruler to measure the sides of a 3-dimensional object.
Students determine the volume of the figure in both centimeters and millimeters.
Students complete practice problems on converting from one metric unit to another metric unit using the process of dimensional analysis.




Page 4 .....

I want my students to understand how important the metric system is to their lives and to realize that the metric system is much easier to use than our archaic English system of measurement.

I wrote a few paragraphs about really cool animal facts.  Each paragraph contains statistics about the animal that have to be converted to another system of measurement.  If the stats are in feet, the student will convert them to centimeters, and vice-versa.  My kids LOVED the pictures I included.



Page 5......

This page contains more animal fact/conversion paragraphs, as well as a few follow up questions.

This product also comes with a 3 page answer key.

This is suitable for grades 7 - 10.  I feel like it went a long way in reinforcing some critical science and math skills.  
Happy Teaching!!




New FREE Item: "Using a Graph to Find Area"






I recently realized that my students need a lot more extra practice on certain science skills:  Graphing, use of simple pieces of lab equipment, problem solving, critical thinking, interpolation and extrapolation.  I wrote this activity to cover all of these things.  






In this lab activity, I give each group of students 4 pieces of poster board of regular size.  Prior to the lab, I cut the poster board into different sizes and shapes.  The students use a ruler to determine the length and width of each regular-shaped piece.  They then determine the area of the piece of poster board.
A balance is used to determine the mass of each piece of poster board, and this data is placed on a graph.  The student should immediately see from the graph that there is a direct relationship between mass of the poster board and the area of the poster board.  When the four points are plotted on the graph, it should result in a straight line.


There is nothing amazing about this activity, but it does provide VALUABLE practice in graphing.  Next, comes the problem solving and critical thinking section of this lab.  Students are given a piece of poster board that is irregular in shape, and they are asked to determine the area of this oddly shaped piece of poster board.  The student easily determines the mass of the irregular piece.  Once the mass is known, the student will use their graph to determine the area.


The activity also includes follow up questions.  The student will use their graph to interpolate and extrapolate to determine the answer to a series of questions.


I am offering this activity to you for free.  I hope that you will enjoy using it with your students.


Happy Teaching!

FREE Osmosis/Difusion Lab

Cell membranes and the transport of materials across membranes is fundamental to a study of biology.  There are, fortunately, many good lab activities that can be carried out when covering this material.  My students just finished doing this lab today.  It is called "The Effect of Concentration on the Rate of Diffusion", and you can download my version of this lab for free.





The concept is very simple.  First, the students fill dialysis bags with varying concentrations of sugar solutions.  The bags are then massed.












Each dialysis bag is placed in a cup of distilled water. The cups are allowed to sit for some period of time.  I have the students wait for 30 minutes, pull the bags out of the cups, and determine the final mass of the bag.  We get very good results in just thirty minutes.  If necessary, you can leave them overnight and get the final mass the next day.


The results are dramatic.  Students will clearly see the relationship between solute concentration and the rate of diffusion across the membrane.

Results are graphed showing the direct relationship between solute concentration and rate of diffusion.

This is one of my favorite labs and is a free download.  I hope you doing this lab as much as I.


FREE DOWNLOAD

Other products related to this topic include:



What's Up in Biology? Labs Involving Transport Across a Membrane!




This is one of my favorite units to teach!

I love it when I get to this point in my biology curriculum.  We have covered the skills of scientific measurement, scientific method, and microscopy.  Now the students are prepared to use these skills on more complex topics.  These concepts (cellular transport, structure of a membrane, movement across the membrane, active and passive transport, cytolysis and plasmolysis , etc.) are so much fun to teach!  There are great labs that can be done during this unit, and it leads to even more complex topics such as cell communication, photosynthesis (thylakoid membranes) and respiration (cristae membranes)!  To me, the most fun in teaching a biology class comes when the student has a knowledge base to draw upon.  It is like a "connect the dot" puzzle.  The student has all the dots, and you (as the teacher) are leading them from dot to dot, helping them to make those important connections.

I do a series of labs involving transport across the membrane.  These labs are very simple, but I have found that my students really love them.  I start with a very simple lab called "Diffusion Through a NonLiving Membrane".  The picture to the right shows the end of the lab.  Sorry, I forgot to take a picture at the beginning!  We use dialysis tubing filled with either a glucose or a starch solution which is then placed in a beaker of water.  In the beaker containing the starch bag, iodine was added to the water in the beaker.  In the beaker containing the glucose bag, students used a glucose test strip to determine if glucose was moving across the membrane.

Results are recorded after 20 minutes, and again after 24 hours.  The results are dramatic and my students immediately grasp the concepts taught by this lab:  (1) The smaller the molecule, the faster it can cross the membrane.  (2) Some substances are too large to cross the membrane.  (3) Movement of materials occurs in both directions.  (4) Water is the substance that most dramatically affects the volume of a cell.

This is such as simple way to get the basic concepts of osmosis and diffusion across to our students.



Man -vs- Squirrel (The squirrel wins!)


I love nature and wildlife of all shapes and sizes, but this pesky little squirrel is just about to get on my last nerve!

This has been an ongoing problem.  I really love my bird feeders.  We sit at our kitchen table for every meal and watch the birds out of the large windows that overlook our deck.  The hummingbirds are my favorite.  I have two hummingbird feeders and a nesting pair lives in the tree in the background.



My dear, sweet husband bought this feeder pole system for me to help with the squirrel problem.  It is a single (very skinny) pole that has 4 separate hangers at the top.  It is SUPPOSED to be SQUIRREL-PROOF!  At least, that is what it said on the box!

I do love the squirrels.  They have their own feeding station down by the pond.  I put out corn and sunflower seeds for them.  Why do they have to be so naughty when I provide them with their own separate dining room?




Look at the poor birds on top of the pole.  They are thinking, "Are those squirrels going to leave anything for us?"








Well...... In the battle of man versus squirrel, the squirrel has won.  I am off to Wal-Mart.  I am going to buy a very large can of Crisco Shortening, and I am gonna GREASE that pole.  Let's see if the squirrel can navigate that!  I'll keep you informed!