Biotechnology vocabulary assessment
Your students will have plenty of new terms to learn in your biotechnology class. Here is an
assessment tool to help you determine their progress. You can use it as apretest and a posttest. When used in this manner, it encourages students to compiledefinitions and explanations in a lab book throughout the course for use during theposttest.
Optional labs and activities
- You might consider substituting the Strawberry DNA Extraction Kit for theWheat Germ DNAExtraction Kit to show your students that they can extract and observe DNA from a common groceryitem. You can get great results with thislab. Also, this is a lab that your students could take home and do in the kitchen with their parents.
- If you have the time and capability, you can make your own practice pipetting stations with Knox Gelatin™. Mold it in any convenient-sized container (such as petri plate tops and bottoms or Tupperware™ containers).When the gelatin sets up, use a pencil or other appropriatelysized tool to punch practice wells into it.
- OurDNA Made Easy Kit™ is an effective and engaging way to teach DNA. The kit, or "green board" as it is sometimes called, provides hands-on exercises in DNA structure and function, replication, and protein synthesis. Place your students in teams, demonstrate the processes, provide guided practice, and then assess the teams as they teach the processes back to you. Students enjoy the teamwork and the opportunity to teach the teacher. The assessment is easy and immediate. One green board is enough for the whole school and is a great way to review for exams.
- Paper and pencil exercises suchas restriction mapping problems are great tools for teachingyour students logical problem solving. Check out our Biotechnologyand Genetics for some ideas. You willalso find useful links to other biotechnology and geneticsresources on the Web, a schedule of upcoming professionaldevelopment workshops, and short videos to help you through thetricky parts of biotechnology lab work.
