Outreach Events
Members of our group support several STEM groups on campus, in the greater Athens area, and beyond. A partial list includes: SciREN; Science Olympiad (specifically NE GA SciOly and SciOly Outreach at UGA); Women in Science (WiSci) at UGA; Georgia Science and Engineering Fair; Athens Science Observer; Athens Science Cafe; and Skype-A-Scientist.
For an example, our lab participated in the 2019 STEMzone outreach event at the November 9 University of Georgia home football game. Many thanks to lab members who organized our booth, especially graduate student Jennifer Jenkins, who has spearheaded the effort. The promotional video made by R-G lab members can be seen below. Lesson plans and science communication examples follow.
Lesson Plans
Our lab is developing resources and outreach projects geared toward local schools and educators.
Pre-primary lesson: Living things. Lesson plan in progress.
Intro to planarians (RRG/Skype-A-Scientist): worksheet.
5th grade lesson (RRG): As the Worm Squirms (worm classification). Click to download: lesson plan; worksheet; pdf of worm images.
7th grade lesson (Jennifer Jenkins): Life’s Little Complexities (planarian regeneration and biological hierarchies). Click to download: lesson plan.
7th grade lesson (Kendall Clay, Jennifer Jenkins, Taylor Medlock-Lanier): Survival of the Fittest: Understanding sexual and asexual reproduction in planarians. Click to download: lesson plan; Powerpoint; Case Study 1; Case Study 2.
9-10 and 11-12 grade lessons or 2 part lesson (Kendall Clay): Neuroscience: What is a Neuron? and Neural Transmission. Click to download: Read Me First; lesson plan 1 (9-10); What is a Neuron? slide deck; lesson plan 2 (11-12); Neural Transmission slide deck; Case Study worksheets; Quiz.
Science Communication
Our lab also has students interested in Science Communication. You can read their work here:
Kendall Clay, “Going full worm: an exploration of Shai-hulud and its parallels to the real worms on Earth”
Kendall Clay, “Sexism in Science: Untold Stories of Stellar Woman Scientists”
Kendall Clay, “Lamenting Loss: The Science of Hallucinations During Bereavement”
Kendall Clay, “Why is it Spicy?”
Kendall Clay, “Embryonic development from ancient myth to present day”
2019: Jennifer and Rachel developed lesson plans for 5th and 7th grade classes (see above for materials). The 5th grade lesson is about classifying worms and the 7th grade lesson is more planarian-focused and addresses biological hierarchies (cell/tissue/organ). These lesson plans address GA Standards of Excellence.
2019: We are available to come to your classroom to talk about a variety of topics. Here, Rachel is helping a primary classroom (3 year olds) learn about living things and non-living things.
There are lots of other resources for folks interested in planarians and regeneration. Here are good places to start:
Cutting Class (Sánchez Alvarado lab, educational resources)
Digiworm and Radiant (Reddien lab, searchable single cell sequencing data)
HHMI Interactive on Planarian Regeneration (with lots of great videos, includes lesson plans)
iBiology videos here, here, and here (Sánchez Alvarado and Reddien)
Planarian Cell Atlas (Rajewsky lab, searchable single cell sequencing data)
PlanMine (Rink lab, genomic and transcriptomic resources for a variety of flatworms)
Planosphere (Sánchez Alvarado laboratory, including data on embryonic gene expression and neoblast clusters)
Schmidtea mediterranea genome database (Sánchez Alvarado lab)