Monday, October 29, 2012

An Energetics Lesson for AP Biology

It has been a year since my last post here, and I thought I'd post an update on how I've been using the data from my trip in classes.  We recently started a unit on energetics in AP Biology, and I used my trip as the hook to get students interested.  I used Prezi to introduce the unit, and then had students add content on the different metabolic pathways.  Click here to see the collaborative presentation using Prezi..


The topics for students to work on were:
1. Glycolysis and Fermentation
2. Pyruvate oxidation and the citric acid cycle
3. Mitochondrial electronic transport and chemiosmotic phosphorylation
4. Fat metabolism
5. Light, the antenna complex, and oxygen production in the chloroplast
6. Photosynthetic electron transport and chemiosmotic phosphorylation
7. Carbon fixation and the Calvin cycle
8. Photorespiration, C4 and CAM

Each small group learned the material and put together their part of the shared presentation.  Because I have 2 sections of AP Bio., topics 1-4 were assigned to the first class, and 5-8 to the second.  Over the next week, each group will present to their own class.  Then they will be required to teach a group of students from the other class who will be responsible for presenting that material to their class.  This way each student presents on two of the topics, and is forced to learn those in depth.

I also wrote a set of questions that each student is expected to use as a study guide for metabolism.