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Ms. Fortier's Classroom

  • Tustin High School
  • Tustin, CA
  • More than three‑quarters of students from low‑income households Data about students' economic need comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, via our partners at MDR Education. Learn more

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show projects from all time

Past projects 2

  • Students Enjoy the "Little Things" with New Microscopes!

    Funded Aug 23, 2018

    These microscopes have been such an amazing asset to my classroom. My students have loved being able to interact with the world on a much smaller scale. When I first had the microscopes out on the lab stations, my students walked into the room with eyes wide in wonderment. I was immediately flooded with questions about what we would be doing that day and if they were actually going to get to use the microscopes. In previous days we had been reviewing how to use the microscopes and the kids were immensely excited to actually be able to use them. As a part of our unit on cell growth and division, students studied slides of each stage of the cell cycle and mitosis. They rotated through the lab stations with microscopes each set up with a particular stage of the cell cycle. My students were able to sketch models of what they observed under the microscopes. For days after we completed this activity, my students continued to talk about how much they wished we could use the microscopes again. In the upcoming semester, we will be completing a pig dissection and it is my goal to have them looking at tissue samples under the microscopes. I cannot begin to explain to you all how much your donation has made a difference in my classroom. It is because of you that my students have gained a new found excitement for science.”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. Fortier

    This classroom project was brought to life by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and one other donor.
  • Dissecting the Day Away!

    Funded Dec 17, 2018

    The experience of a fetal pig dissection is invaluable to my students. I can only hope to describe the excitement that they feel for this experiment. As soon as I let them know that they would be partaking in a dissection my entire class erupted in excited cheers and laughter. They were so grateful for this to be a part of their educational experience. They immediately started talking about who is going to be the head dissector, who is going to be in charge of notes, and what they wanted to see when they cut into the pigs.

    We started off by doing a lesson on lab and dissection safety. I "gamified" lab safety by having students participate in an interactive quiz to ensure that they knew all of the rules and procedures in order to be successful in lab. My students were instantly engaged and wanted to learn more about the dissection tools that they would get to use. The entire time we were completing this lesson they kept asking me why they couldn't just start dissecting the pigs. After class had finished all of my students left with excited looks on their faces and I heard from several other students that they were bummed that they couldn't participate as well because they were in a different biology class.

    Our dissection happened over the course of one week in April. My students have been studying human body systems and we were using the fetal pigs as a model for the human body. The first day of dissecting consisted of opening up the jaw and the throat cavity. My students were so excited to cut "Joker Smiles" into their pigs and see all the way back into their throats. The following day we opened up the body cavity looking at the digestive system. Students went through and identified different parts of the digestive and urinary tract and created models of what their pig looked like. The next thing we investigated was the thoracic cavity. Students identified the heart, the lungs, the diaphragm, as well as important veins and arteries. Since my students had spent two weeks becoming experts on the respiratory and circulatory systems they were especially excited to see what all of those structures actually look like. We finished up our dissection by by looking at the pig's brain. Since the techniques to make the brain visible are a little bit more difficult, I prepped a few pigs to have exposed brains and opened up one pig as my students gathered around the lab bench and watched. We had some in depth discussions about brain development and my students had the best time. At the end of the week my students were so sad to be done with the dissection.

    My students have the time of their lives participating in this dissection over the course of the week. I am so grateful for the fact that you chose to invest your money in my students lives. This experience will be something that lives on with them for the rest of their life and you are a the reason why this was possible. Thank you for your generosity, your kindness, and your dedication to the education of some pretty incredible people.”

    With gratitude,

    Ms. Fortier

An essential part of my Biology and Oceanography class is the planning and carrying out of investigations. As a fully Next Generation Science Standards aligned classroom, it is imperative that my students are able to fully partake in what inquiry based explorations. One of the most important of these is a water sample lab. Students are tasked with collecting many different samples of water from the community. This can be water from the beach, streams, pools, or even the tap. We then look at the samples under the microscope and try to identify the different microorganisms found in our community’s water. This sparks an amazing debate about what makes water safe and involves a great deal of hands-on citizen science. This and so many other projects bring students who are normally apathetic learners who are work avoidant to engage with the class. Microscopes provide students with the opportunity to see what they normally can’t and opens up a world of opportunities for them to be engaged in the class conversation.

About my class

An essential part of my Biology and Oceanography class is the planning and carrying out of investigations. As a fully Next Generation Science Standards aligned classroom, it is imperative that my students are able to fully partake in what inquiry based explorations. One of the most important of these is a water sample lab. Students are tasked with collecting many different samples of water from the community. This can be water from the beach, streams, pools, or even the tap. We then look at the samples under the microscope and try to identify the different microorganisms found in our community’s water. This sparks an amazing debate about what makes water safe and involves a great deal of hands-on citizen science. This and so many other projects bring students who are normally apathetic learners who are work avoidant to engage with the class. Microscopes provide students with the opportunity to see what they normally can’t and opens up a world of opportunities for them to be engaged in the class conversation.

About my class

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