Modified Vocabulary Matching

After the success of the first vocabulary matching cards activity I did with biochemistry, I decided to do it again for the cell organelles in Biology 1 Part 1. This time, however, I did it a little bit differently but with surprisingly great results.

For the lesson on the organelles, I have always had my students correlate cell structures to city structures and then create a "Cell City" where they draw and label a poster of a city with the names and functions of the cell organelles. This has worked fairly well in the past, but when students reached Biology 1 Part 2, they could often remember the name of the organelle and what city structure it was, but not necessarily the function of it.

What I did was to take the vocabulary matching activity with the 3 piles of cards, one with the organelle, one with the function, and one with the picture and changed it slightly so I had 2 piles, the organelle name and function piles, but copied some pages with large pictures of each organelle on them. Then I had the students color and cut out the pictures and arrange them in a poster "cell," then label it with the other two piles of cards. This worked amazingly well! The students were engaged in the activity and had fun trying to match up the picture, word, and definition while trying to build a giant plant cell. As an added challenge, I had several of each type of organelle (where appropriate) so that students could see that cells don't always have just one of everything. I then used this activity as a springboard for the cell city project, and got better results from that then I have ever gotten before! This was a great way to add another element of critical thinking and understanding to the vocab matching activity by having them construct something using what they were matching. The students also seem much more able to recall the facts about the cell organelles as well! I am definately sticking this one in my bag o' tricks!