Biochembelle's Science for Students

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Thank you ever so much for your generous donations to fund our water distillation unit for our Chemistry Class.

The water distiller allows us to purify our own water for the Chemistry classroom. It is an economical way for the students to get distilled water for their experiments.

My classes greatly appreciate your gift to our school. We will put the distiller to good use in future laboratory experiments. Again we greatly appreciate your generosity and donations to our classroom. ”

With gratitude,

Mr. Parker

We are all so grateful for your donation to our project! It was a huge success! We spent 3 days on the dissection, and we hated to put them away, but the weekend and a teacher inservice day put a halt on our investigation. The students were amazed by the experience and will never forget it.

On the first day, we prepared for the dissection by rinsing the rats, placing them in the trays, discussing lab safety, and discussing the ethics and value of dissection. We also observed the external anatomy of the rat and talked about its adaptations for survival. The students learned how to tell if they were male or female, which led to many interesting conversations. The second day we worked on opening the rats, practicing a few forensic pathologist techniques, and then located all of the organs while comparing them to diagrams. The third day students removed the organs, measured them, described or sketched them, stated the function of the organs, and told which body system(s) they were a part of. Some students discovered that their rats were pregnant, and the WHOLE class got up to watch as they delivered the babies by "C-section." :)

One of my students has Addison's Disease, which involves the adrenal glands, and he was very excited to see that a rat has adrenal glands also. Another student whose mother is pregnant was amazed at how the rats organs were all smashed together to make room for the 13 babies that the mama rat was carrying, and he wondered if his mother's organs were like that too. They were all shocked to find out how big the liver was and how long the small intestines were. They thought the name should be LONG intestines. There is no way that I can tell you all of the wonderful things they learned and got to observe by doing this project! I hope you enjoy the pictures! This activity would not have been possible without your help!”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Terrell

Principles of the Biomedical Sciences, the first course in the Medical Sciences Academy, involves a unit that reviews chromosomal structure and function. Students prepare chromosomal spreads in the lab using living human tumor cells known as HeLa Cells. Interdisciplinary studies of HeLa is important to the bioethics and history of medicine. The topics of HeLa Cells are studied coherently in English, History, as well as Principles of the Biomedical Sciences. An interdisciplinary unit using the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks allowed students to see a broader picture of not only what HeLa cells are but also who HeLa was, the medical interventions used throughout history and what is used today, and the background history within the story. Thanks to your donations, students gained a better understanding that as health care professionals there are accepted ethical practices with respect to cultural, social, and ethnic differences within the health care environment. Students also differentiated between ethical and legal issues impacting health care in the past and today by developing a detailed timeline and keeping a medical dialectical journal. Keeping a dialectical journal allowed the students to compare personal, professional, and organizational ethics and recognize ethical issues and their implications related to health care throughout history.

I hope you know, just from what I described above, how much your donations impacted my students educational experience.  My students came back to class with multiple discussions and really enjoyed the story behind HeLa.  Throughout our class discussions they were amazed the way people were treated differently in the field of medicine throughout history.  Again, thank you for everything.  This is a valuable project that will be able to continue and impact our future students the way it impacted my students this year”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Gurule-Leyba

Our students did an outreach to the kindergarten last Friday. Students from the WET club at our school practiced the experiments, prepped all of the solutions and traveled together on the bus. I set up the experiments the night before so that the students could hit the ground running. The kids had spent time two weeks prior preparing; a home-school family came in the week before as guinea pigs. Last Friday, Mr. K's and Ms. Debby's kids (who have special needs), my WET club (students from my Chemistry classes), two volunteers,and the home-school family spent the morning doing over a dozen fun science experiments together with the kindergarteners. It was fantastic! The group set up in the multi-purpose room; as the children entered, they received a t-shirt as an art smock, donated from another teacher at our school. The little ones loved all of the experiments: goofy glow, flubber, etc. The WET club sponsor, GSCNC, funded the bus trip and our local state representative helped purchase vinegar, baking soda, vortex tubes,etc. Ms. Debby supplied bottles. Additionally, our groups left instructions with the kindergarten teachers regarding all of the experiments. All morning the children were beaming about how much they loved science. This program is terrific for all of the students. The little ones learn to love science; the students with special needs get an opportunity to teach. Most of all the Chemistry students perform authentic community service. After the program, our group stopped to eat together at Burger King. All of us are deeply grateful for your help to allow us to celebrate Apple-ka-dabra together.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Stevens

I can't fully express my joy, excitement, and thanks for your donations to my project. It is great to see that you share my vision for reaching children. In learning to be responsible for others, we so often do not have the needed materials.

The tools that you have funded will enable students to care for Halo, our class bunny, in an appropriate way. It will also enable my class to watch Halo while not in class. My students need that link from school to home.

I hope to share with my colleagues a new technique in learning. Thank you so much. I can't wait to introduce these resources to the children and Halo.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Kirkman

Thank you for your generous donation to support my chemistry classes. It is wonderful to see evidence that people across the country value a high-quality, lab-based science curriculum for all students. Knowing that you also believe my students deserve the same opportunities as students who attend schools with fully-equipped labs makes my challenging job my easier.

Over the course of the last two months, your donation has provided my students with an opportunity to perform a flame test, create perfume, and test liquids for polarity. With the knowledge they have gained, they have a new appreciation for and chemical understanding of 4th of July fireworks, good and bad smells they encounter on a daily basis, and the ability to write on plastic using permanent markers but not washable markers. I could not be more proud or excited to see my students relating chemistry they learn in class to their everyday lives because of the materials we now have available in our lab.

I get so excited to use these materials with my students that I usually introduce a lab by saying, "you guys are just going to LOVE this lab - this is one of my favorites!" I had a student stop me one day saying, "Ms. H, you say all these labs are your favorites." I conceded, but asked "don't you guys love labs, too?" to which I received a small but certain nod from almost every student in the room. I am so grateful that you have donated to my project so that my students and I can continue to look forward to experiencing chemistry in the lab.”

With gratitude,

Ms. Haines

It's been a few months since receiving the supplies you donated and my students and I have been busy putting the supplies to good use! Since your donation my students have had the opportunity to put the science project books and computer that were donated to great use. My students will be competing in their first science fair this Wednesday! It's been such a great experience to be able to see my students' hard work and creativity shine through in their projects. Your donation of books and supplies made it possible to participate in this fair.

My students have truly enjoyed the math lessons that I've designed around the picture books you donated. I've been able to use these picture books to draw a connection to more abstract math concepts. This has been a great way to reach struggling math students. Some students were even inspired to create their own picture books based on math concepts!

Thank you so much for helping to expose my students to this type of hands on learning. ”

With gratitude,

Ms. Weissburg

I want to take this time to personally thank you for donating the money to buy the resources for my class project Earthquakes, Volcanoes and Tornadoes Oh My . The resources made learning about these earth science topics so much fun and the students liked being able to see and experiment with the resources. We built bottle tornadoes which were a big hit. In fact I substituted for another teacher for a couple of weeks and I brought one in to show her students. The whole time I was there it never failed someone in every class would go turn it over at least once to watch the torando.The other resources were just as well liked.

Thank you for supporting education in schools as it is greatly appreciated by not only myself but also the students you have helped. Please continue donating to other projects.”

With gratitude,

Mrs. Moore