Malaysia and Plant games in class

A few weeks ago, the school sent me to Malaysia for training on teaching higher level biology. I realized there how some teachers can get on my nerves and be all touchy feely. I was in a class with about 25 other people, and about 2/3 were women. While the topics were pretty good and helped inform me on how to better prep the students for the standardized tests, there were some cheesey moments when the teachers shared teaching techniques with each other. This included things like "When I teach about enzymes, I teach about chocolate first!". Wow.
My name tag during the conference was a horrible fusion of the school I work at and my name. "Yew Ting". That would make me the founder of my own school. The pillars of my school? "Excellence. Discipline. And SHUT UP!"

Moving on the classroom antics...

After the unit on photosynthesis, and filling the students' head full of knowledge about osmosis, transpiration and translocation, we played a game of photosynthesis with a twist - each team of students represented a plant. The roll of a die determined the weather conditions for each day, sunny, rain, cloudy, extremely humid, etc. With each corresponding day, students would collect sugar molecules based on how much photosynthesis occurred, as well as remove water from their cylinders, based on how many leaves they had and how much transpiration occurred. They could trade in their "sugar currency" for leaves, more roots and flowers. The point of the game was to survive and function as a plant and create as many flowers at the end. Enough about background, if you've stuck with me this far, I thank you.

The hard part of this activity was the report I had them do at the end. As always, this report offered me a variety of responses that I deemed blogworthy.

"To be honest, we didn't have a specific strategy. We just bought what we want."
Often a strategy employed by humans...

"If your strategy is to buy as many leafs as possible to collect more sugar, Sunnie will make you go out of the game."
The best part of this quote is that there is actually a student in our class who has the name "Sunnie". She makes us get out of the game?

"So at last, it's sad we lost".
How unfortunate. At last.

"So the weather cannot be exactly we wants. And there has insects."
One variable I gave the students was picking from a few cards which could either be positive things (such as more water), or negative things (such as insects). That's exactly what we NOT wants.

One student turned in the most peppy, bright report, each paragraph was written in a different bright color, and a different curvy font. Her concluding remarks?
"I believe that our strategy is very successful and sagacious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
(Yes, I made sure I had exactly 14 exclamation marks, the exact number she put on the end of her lab report.)

This next quote sounds like it should be in a fortune cookie.
"No, because every decision will have both good points and bad points, so just wish and try to save sugar."

I gave out the diffusion/osmosis test to a different set of students this past week and the results were still pretty funny. Here's a sampling:

"Hypotonic - it will be all grown up"
"Hypertonic - it will be smallers"

What are characteristics of living organisms?
Answer: "Expensive"

And an answer filled in was:
" I don't know T^T" (the drawing was in there! Honest!)

The last funny answer I'll leave you with is from a test in which I asked for things that are transported in the blood. A student will know if his spelling is bad so they will often add extra words to try to clarify what they mean. My favorite?
"Haemones... you know, a man have a lot of it"