Vocabulary and a Beach Ball

Biology Vocabulary Activity

One of the biggest challenges for teaching biology is helping students learn the vocabulary that is foreign to them. I took to a beach ball to assess what the students knew about each of the macromolecules.

Anytime you can get  a part of the beach into your classroom you need to take advantage of it.  This activity works great to supplement the Biochemistry Boxing Activity that you can get free here by signing up for email updates.

Vocabulary Activity

To do this activity you will need a beach ball and a dry erase marker. Write the names of the macromolecules or any vocabulary terms on each section of the beach ball.

Toss the ball to the students and when they catch it they look to see where their right thumb lands and say the definition of the word their thumb landed on.

I then have the students throw the ball back to me to prevent them from being tempted to bounce it off their classmates heads.

Participation is 100% and it allow me to assess their knowledge of the vocabulary. If a students thumb lands on wild they get to pick the vocabulary term. The kids did not want to stop this activity.


Beach Ball Warm Up closure

7 thoughts on “Vocabulary and a Beach Ball”

  1. This is a great idea. I use a similar technique but had never thought about using a beach ball and marker- I’m going to buy a beach ball now!!

  2. For a larger amount of vocab words you could use a permanent marker and have them define the one their thumb landed on. (or closest word).

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