Model Making

One of the things that I've tried to do is avoid the whole chalk-and-talk thing, which seems to be an easy trap to fall into when using ICT in teaching; I've read on other blogs, and its a point that I've taken on board, that ICT can be as boring as any other technique if used badly.

So.

I've tried model making. It should be mentioned here that I'm about as artistic as a brick but I thought that I'd give it a go. A major plus here is that there is such an amazing range of craft materials available these days (as well as the whole Blue Peter cardboard roll thing). When I was a child we had pipe cleaners to play with, but today they have these wonderful chenille straws (straws to My mind are plastic but these are fur covered bits of wire) in some lovely neon colours.

I mention these because I used them to represent chromosomes in cell division. It seemed to work really well (certainly the learners seemed to retain the information and enjoyed the exercise, although one or two were a bit puzzled by the whole thing). Normal cell division is easy enough to understand, but gamete production, with its mixing of paternal and maternal DNA can be a worry for learners, and the models provided a nice way of showing the mixing and how the final cell was produced; it was visual with its bright colours and kinesthetic as they had to pull the straws apart in order to create the cells. I think its a technique I shall employ again.