Using Manipulatives in the Biology Classroom

It's hard to believe that this is my 12th year as a High School Science & Biology teacher... somehow I've gone from being one of the newbies to one of the more experienced teachers the newbies come to for help. While I certainly don't feel like the wise old teacher, when I think back to my strategies of choice as a new teacher and how I plan my lessons and units lately there are some significant differences.

One of the simplest and most powerful tools in my arsenal is the use of manipulatives, anything that gets my students moving around cards, arrows, beads, models or even tiny cut out moths while they apply a concept discussed in class. I currently use a mix of homemade manipulatives and some kits & models my school has purchased, both are equally valuable when used in the right context. To demonstrate this I will show you some of my favourites.

#1 Food web organism cards with arrows

This simple DIY is a manipulative tool that I first started making years ago when teaching AP Environmental Science at Nansha College Preparatory Academy in China. I chose a video clip of an ecosystem from a documentary like Planet Earth and then turned that clip into a table listing the different organisms and their food source(s). I then wrote down all the names of the organisms on cue cards and made a bunch of arrows and had students use the cards to make a food web in small groups.

I have since made this activity many times with different courses and different levels of complexity, the food web shown below is from a Pacific Sea Mount that I had my IB Biology students analyze at the food chain, food web and energy pyramid level.

#2 Chromosome Beads for Mitosis & Meiosis

Students often struggle to memorize the phases of both mitosis & meiosis and more advanced students understand have to wrangle with the differences between chromosomes and sister chromatids in the process of meiosis. Both of these challenging ideas present in most Biology units and courses can be explained with chromosome manipulatives such as the ones pictured below. They can be used to have students make a stop motion film of the process for their notes, as a check for understanding, as a review activity and even as a prior knowledge assessment in more advanced Biology courses such as AP and IB DP Biology.

#3 Peppered Moth Paper Cut-outs

The Peppered Moth case study is a classic example of natural selection that is often taught in various Biology courses, including IB DP Biology. One of the best ways I have found for students to really understand and remember this example is to have them act as the Moth's predator...a bird & to hunt the moths on the different backgrounds with their beaks (tweezers). This is really fun for the students and other than the cutting out of the moths part (I Netflix on my couch during that process) it's pretty easy to set up. In addition to the dark and light coloured backgrounds traditionally used to represent the pre-Industrial Revolution light coloured trees & the post-Industrial revolution dark coloured trees I use birch bark and ferns. This gives students a wide variety of backgrounds to support their observations.

Check out the "hunting" of moths by one of my IBDP Biology students in the video clip below.

Manipulatives for the win!