Index of Projects
This page contains a sample list of significant lessons and projects I created at various schools, grades 6-12.
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STEAM rooms.webmCelebration of STEAM
During STEAM week, we featured 'dress like a scientist' day. Here's a screenshot from our virtual assembly. Students and staff wore costumes and changed their Zoom backgrounds to reflect what they thought a scientist would look like. Hilariously, a number of students decided to dress like me -- Ms DeNeui!
My team and I completely reimagined Barnhart School's traditional "STEAM fair." Our final product was a week-long, interactive display of student work, live workshops and digital multimedia. The event catered to students from K-8, their families and the community of Arcadia.
Prolia - Coastal Erosion
This 2-3 week project is interdisciplinary engineering challenge in which teams of students research, design and present their own solutions to the problem of coastal erosion on the imaginary island of Prolia.
Fish dissection
In a non-Covid year, 7th grade is normally the first time students do a dissection. Typically, we would dissect frogs in small groups. However, the pandemic required innovation. Whole yellow croaker were cheaply available from a local Chinese grocery store, so we dissected those instead!
Through video lessons and google classroom integrations, 7th graders were able to complete and document their successful fish dissections from all over the world. One student joined us live from Taiwan and another from Texas. In spite of the world circumstances, it was the gross, memorable, exciting learning experience a dissection should be.
Farming SImulation
This three-day simulation is based on a true story in from California's Central Valley. Using some basic students compete, collaborate and deal with a natural disaster to design and maintain the most lucrative farm possible.
The lesson includes an introductory slideshow, three days of student handouts, and a guide to help students calculate their final income.
A flooded student field. Many crops ruined.
Mars DBQ.docxMars DBQ
Our school adopted the DBQ program as part of a focus on essay writing skills.
All classes were required to teach at least 1 DBQ unit per semester. Unfortunately, the DBQ project did not have any units on science at the time.
Here's what we wrote in collaboration with English and Earth Science teachers to create this science-based DBQ for High School Biology.
Trout in the Classroom
7th grade life science specifically adopted our tank of trout, but all classes helped design the insulation and care for the fish with feeding and water changes.
Ideally, the entire middle school would have participated in a trout-release field trip to set our small fry free in their approved location (Santa Fe Dam and Recreation Area). However, with Covid, I took the fish with another volunteer.
Students contributed by assembling our photos into the video you see here.
Trout release 2020.movMiddle School Online Labs
While we were completely remote, I taught science with the following schedule:
Mon/ Tues Introduce the concept/content for the week
Wednesday - Check for understanding, prepare for lab
Thursday - Asynchronous class. Students complete lab at home. Zoom link is open if students have questions about their lab. Students create FlipGrid videos as evidence of lab completion and submit via Google Classroom
Friday - Discuss lab results.
Here's an example of one of these labs: Differential Absorption. We collected and compared class data using my instructional videos on Google Sheets.
Differential Absorption Graphing2 - subtraction.webmDifferential Absorption Graphing1 - adjusting vertical axis.webm