24 August 2007 ACTIVITY: Drawing Diatoms like Ernst Haeckel

I am on a mission. My mission is to enlighten all 150 of my students (plus anyone else who cares to sit down and listen to my stories) about Global Warming. My mission is to plant seeds in my students heads and get them to start thinking about the research being done with Global Warming. My mission is to nurture them in the ways of scientific inquiry,to think out side the box, to collect data and problem solve. So where to start? How do you help them learn?

You listen with your eyes.

My students began their learning this week, by learning about the beauty of the diatom. DiatomsDiatoms are one of the most common types of phytoplankton. Most diatoms are unicellular, although they can exist as colonies in the shape of filaments or ribbons. Diatom communities are a popular tool for monitoring environmental conditions, past and present, and are commonly used in studies of water quality. are very important in the spring ice algae bloom in the Bering Sea. They ARE the spring bloom. The problem with teaching this to students is that diatoms are so very very small, and our microscopes are so very very inadequate. Plus why should they believe me that there are invisible specks that control the cycling of carbon?

I decided to set the curriculum hook by having them draw. My students are doodlers. They draw and doodle on paper, folder covers, desktops, heck they even doodle on their hands and arms if there is nothing available. I looked into using Ernst Haeckel, the supreme diatom illustrator of the late 1800's (and his work) as a macroscopic intoduction to a microscopic organism.

The seventh grade Hawaii science curriculum map has students learning how to do science like scientists. Scientific illustration is extremely important in science. It is a skill that is required in order to record accurate observations. My students need to learn to draw what they see.

Dover books has an inexpensive book and CD on Haeckel's work. I purchased it through Amazon.com and set about making a powerpoint to introduce my kids to scientific illustration and the beauty of the diatom. Haeckel's work is truly beautiful and very accurate. To see his drawings projected on a screen is breathtaking. I had my venue.

But as is always the way in curriculum development, the path takes curves and turns in unexpected ways. I initially wrote the lesson to be done with chalk pastels. The twist is that I decided to have my students practice scientific illustration using the software 'Paint' How interesting to use technology and compare drawing with a computer with drawing by the students hands.

Over that past week, that is what I have done. I showed them a powerpoint of scientific illustration and Haeckels's work. Then I began the slow painful task of using the paint tools to make an exacting drawing.

Mrs. P, they say, how can we draw something that's invisible?

Listen with your eyes. Draw the shadow.

I made a model of a diatom using an old Christmas ornament, tacky glue, and metallic pony beads. 

As I passed around the styrofoam model I had crafted from packaging materials and tulle, and the clear plastic Diatom model scavenged from a Christmas ornament, I felt an odd familiar spark. Suddenly I was back in my role as scientist on the Healy. Problem solving, helping my students see what they cannot, giving them basic tools and information, guiding them, and believing they can do it.

And they are.