composting lab ideas for high school

I'll be incorporating garden experiments into my curriculum this year, as I have in years past. Composting being a wonderful way enrich our soil. This article gives teachers so excellent id... See More

I'll be incorporating garden experiments into my curriculum this year, as I have in years past. Composting being a wonderful way enrich our soil. This article gives teachers so excellent ideas on how to tackle composting with their students while still addressing NGSS phenomena. Addressing new vocabulary like detritus, decaying and decomposition in biology and chemistry make this article a valuable resource. This type of composting can be accomplished inside and out of the classroom. Having students identifying the variables and the hypotheses and create their own lab based on their own questions helps students to feel ownership in the process and setting up a composting bin or jar in our garden. Starting off with asking the students if our school yard has optimal conditions for composting make this an inquiry based learning lab will be shared with my department, for others to use in discussing the carbon cycle in biology and decomposition in chemistry. Hands on digging in the dirt and doing more away from the computer screen may be beneficial in these uncertain times.