Demonstrating the carbon cycle was never so much fun as it was in Kristen Dotti’s New Orleans session, Drop the Lecture and Let the Students Pick Up the Learning in Environmental Science. Dotti, who teaches Advanced Placement high school students at Christ School in Arden, North Carolina, had teachers use brightly colored plastic balls to create models of CO₂ and other chemical compounds. Next, they had to choose which organism they were going to be and act out how the organism would behave in photosynthesis or cell respiration. Around the room, you could hear excited teachers exclaiming, “I’m a coral! I’m a deer!”
That was fine with Dotti. “You should be talking. It should be loud in here,” she declared.
I took a few videos to let you in on the fun. In the first one, a group of teachers are creating their models.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1RODa1giyM[/youtube]
This group is demonstrating mineralization.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5HHjPFFKwE[/youtube]
Now the “dramatization” begins!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRoDqWktdFY[/youtube]