The catchy title for Gina Aldridge’s science unit hints at the age of her students. Because bodily functions are a source of endless amusement to adolescents everywhere, Density, Got Gas? was a winner with students at Rhodes Junior High in Mesa, Arizona. The title became a running joke throughout the unit.

Making Good Teaching Even Better
Humor is one strategy Gina employs to cultivate interest in science. She knows that science concepts are conveyed best through labs and hands-on learning activities. Her original activities, on which Density, Got Gas? is based, are robust and engaging in their own right. When technology was added, a high-interest unit became even more engaging. “Students always like studying density of matter because the labs and hot-air balloon construction are very engaging. With a project like this, kids are creating the learning themselves, not just receiving what’s being imparted by someone else. It’s more open ended—they are given freer reign, and they like that.”

The technology features Gina added elevate her lessons even further. Presentation tools such as PowerPoint* allow students to display and compare their various lab results—a nice change from typical lab write-ups with only the teacher as an audience. Gina notes that students seem more likely to consider questions of reliability and validity when comparing PowerPoint* lab reports (especially when results differ wildly!). “The classroom technology allows kids to summarize what they’ve learned in a public way, ” Gina says, “and it promotes a new level of critical thinking.”

Suggestions for Others
After conducting the technology-enhanced version of the unit, Gina offers several suggestions:

• She used a single PowerPoint slideshow to introduce and sequence activities throughout the unit. Every day she showed one or two slides, each outlining an activity or concept that related to the day’s lesson. This was effective for keeping everyone attending to expectations and keeping a record of what had been done.
• When Gina teaches the unit again she’ll be able to use authentic student samples, instead of the example she prepared. “Kids produced better work than I expected, better than my mock student samples.”
• Gina designed the unit with the idea that students would build a class Web site. She found the curriculum took longer to teach than she had predicted, and this part of the unit plan was omitted. Gina’s plan was ambitious in many ways, and she wants people to know that she spent a lot of time outside the Intel® Teach Program developing her unit. “It represents a lot more work than people can do in 40 hours,” she says, “but it was worth it.”