Speak Easies has just introduced its hands-on photosynthesis kit on Teachers Pay Teachers (our store there is Speak Easies Active Learning Tools for Biology), and now we have it for sale here on our website too. It has pieces to cut out and move around on a membrane picture to enact the photosynthesis process. It’s all self-contained in the student’s biology notebook, ready to pull out and practice at a moment’s notice. (Won’t that be a hit at parties?!)

Everything a student needs to enact the process is there: a picture of the thylakoid membrane, a list of the steps of photosynthesis, summarized, and a place to store the cut pieces between uses. Plus there’s a key to the pieces of the kit (including fun facts), a simple worksheet to help students understand and remember where it all happens, and lots more, including a six-page summary for lecture or to use as a reading packet.

Sometimes people ask me “Why use a hands-on kit, when it’s all available to watch and drop and drag with a computer program or app?” So, here goes. Pick up one of the pieces. Hold it in your hand. Turn it around. Look at it closely. Read about it in the key. Now start moving it through the steps of photosynthesis. You’ll have to think. You’ll have to be sure you know which piece is which. You’ll have to struggle a little. And that struggle is the learning part, you know, when the synapses and neural pathways get organized.

Someone told me that actors learning their parts in a play have an easier time remembering the lines that are spoken when they are moving. Movement. Touch. Kinesthetic intelligence at work.