biologist's+thoughts+4

It is my intention that I will keep a record of my thoughts after each lesson. Feel free to respond to anything I have written. Hopefully my thoughts will inspire, motivate and allow you to improve your understanding of biology as well as get the most out of our classes. Link back to inside the mind of the biol guru links to biologist's thoughts week 1& 2 biologist's thoughts week 3 & 4 biologist's thoughts week 5 & 6 biologist's thoughts week 9 & 10

**Lesson 19 (Tuesday 10th March 2009)** It seems every lesson continues to hold in store something different. Today, the day of Purim and more importantly the "day after" the PuzzA party, was always going to be a difficult one to try and get them to at least learn something. I didn't plan anything really heavy for them, just an introduction to homeostasis. Although the first activity was a really good one from my point of view, it was probably too much of a brain drain. I will do something like this activity again because it gets them to think about what they do know as well as seeing if they can notice inaccuracies in someone else's explanation. Now, I have never had so many (what am I saying, ANY) students "fall asleep" during a lesson. At least without me utilising the opportunity to illustrate so clearly to the rest of the class-"the fight or flight response". Everytime I would look around it would be someone different who had decided that the desk was a great place to rest their weary head. I really have no sympathy for them, for this is biology, there are no excuses! A few minutes later someone else's face would be enjoying an intimate tango with the smooth surface of the desk. Then all of sudden another head would pop back up, as if the universe existed once again. In one case, the eyes couldn't wait for the head to respond and just closed, while sitting upright. I think I counted up to 5 poor souls, at any one time, who succumbed to the mesmoring effect of a hard solid surface. Go figure! I actually began to find all this quite amusing as the lesson progressed but I didn't let on about this (at least I don't think I did), and eventually I did start to feel a little for them. For I did know how they felt, many more times (than they will ever know) have I experienced such "delights". Now in the end they did do well to try and listen, contribute and ask questions. But I wonder if they will go over any of the lesson tonight. At least by tomorrow night, I hope. Okay, my main focus now is how do we cover the nervous and endocrine systems efficiently, effectively and in an interesting way, as well as the different examples of negative feedback. I have some initial ideas but I need to dwell on these more. As to their enzyme SACs, well I have read them all now and I'm beginning to assess them gradually. It is so frustrating to see responses that do not answer the question that is being asked, as well as incorrect use of some really basic terminology. On a positive note there was also a large quantity of well written repsonses that showed logic and accurate application of biological knowledge. They just have to learn from these tasks, both conceptually and skillwise and continue to improve. "puzza" voj, "puzzA" :) glad we entertained you. i swear ill be awake tomorrow. :)

**Lesson 20 (Friday 13th March 2009)** A full on lesson about the nervous system, neurons, synapses and action potentials. Although I provided them with some verbal explanations, animations/videos and even a small role play/analogy, I am concerned that some of them were overwhelmed, now that we are getting to a part of the course where the detail can be so vast when trying to fully understand some of these concepts. And they are not easy, it will take several attempts on their behalf (and mine) to make sense of what is important and what is just "extra" background knowledge. I tried to just give the main points today. I wonder what they thought were the key points of the lesson. Will they go home, reflect on the lessonn and write these out? They should, no they must! Did I make it clear enough for them though? I am struggling here with trying to provide a lesson that will cater for all of them. I mean the lesson (80min) went by so quickly, yet I didn't really set aside time for them to "digest" the information. I brief comment about the "mexican wave" analogy/role play. My impression is that this may have really been useful for some of them. The first time we tried the role play the leading student chose not to throw up the hands but instead it was to give the person next to them a little "nudge" and observe how this "bit of information" travelled along 17 students. This wasn't my intention but I think it actually helped that we did this first. For I then suggested lets do the mexican wave now because there are a couple of things that it will show better. At this point a student commented that the mexican wave illustrates more clearly how a particular region of a cell returns to the resting state. I was blown away! What a fantastic insight, one that I really hadn't contemplated before (I had other characteristics that I wanted to highlight). My only disappointment was that I didn't acknowledge highly enough the value of that contribution. Well, hopefully they read this some time soon and feel good about themselves (if they get onto the wiki that is, this student is a little slack in that sense). Having done the role play the second time around I felt they could better appreciate how a message can travel along a neuron but also the idea of the "all or nothing" effect. Next lesson I will provide them with a similar style of lesson that relates to the endocrine system but from there I know now that I will have to come up with some class activity for them to put it all together. Given that I will be away for a lesson later on this week, I am looking at really giving them an in depth activity that will involve them presenting to each other (in some way) their understanding of various concepts.

Let's see. First of all, some of them really know how to frustrate the hell out of me. Five minutes into the lesson and I still had some of them waltzing in! And to make things worse I had a quiz that I had already started. What is going on here? Do they not realise that time matters. Maybe I need to spell it out for them here. Take 5min out of each lesson. That's 55min a fortnight. 8 fortnights a semester makes 440min. This is the equivalent to ** ELEVEN 40min lessons ** they are throwing away. That is a fortnight's worth of class and that is if we totally utilise the rest of the lesson. So when we get to the exam and they wonder why we haven't had time for revision, well here is the answer. Think of it! A whole fortnight worth of lessons that we could be spending revising. I wonder if I have made it clear enough for them. Now to the quiz, I am frustrated even more so with the fact that I have about half the class that I don't think are working hard enough on developing their understanding. Hmmm... If they are going to do something about it, they should do it NOW and not the week before the exam. Despite all this, I think I kept myself calm pretty well. I was happy with the way I explained hormone action and the endocrine system. I think I covered the main ideas well and showed some animations to reinforce what I was saying. It is important they go over this material tonight. They need to identify the key terms covered, the importnant concepts and also be able to compare both the nervous and endocrine systems (as well as neurotransmitters and hormones). I am a bit hesitant about being excited about the activity I have planned for tomorrow. Last time I did this the lesson went crap (for want of a better word). Anyway, it will be interesting to see how they repond to it- a group activity in which they will be challenged about experimental design as well as relating it to homeostasis. Still unsure about what I will get them to do on Friday while I am away. A moment of inspiration did occur, thanks to one of the students bringing up doing an area of study test. But why should I do all the work? It then occurred to me that a fantastic activity for them to do as homework would be to write a test for someone else in the class and then they swap tests. I will set this as a task and if they get into it then I have no doubts that they will benefit from it tremendously.
 * Lesson 21 (Monday 16h March 2009) **

An interesting lesson today. I guided them through some recent scientific research relating to energy expenditure and lifespan. I think they found it quite interesting. More importantly I wanted to devote some lesson time to explicitly covering scientific process and experimental design. The satisfying aspect was the discussion that emanated from the groups. It was really meaningful. They were thinking quite deeply about the questions and by and large they came up with biologically sound repsonses. It did surprise me a little that it filled the entire double lesson. I knew it would go for a while but the depth of discussion probably had an effect here (in a positive way). Did they get something out of it? I think so, because scientific skills, such as understanding experimental design and predicting the type of results that would support or negate a hypothesis are all part of the course (and examinable). The lesson gave them an opportunity to work on these skills with the help of each other. Earlier in the lesson I highlighted to them just how easy the class misreads questions (based on the previous day's quiz) or at least is careless in choosing answers. But it did bring about a memorable and worthwhile moment. One student decided to share their strategy with the rest of the class in dealing with a particular type of answer. It was fantastic. I jumped on this moment as a way of highlighting the benefit of talking to each other about biology and sharing ideas. I certainly won't have all the answers for them all the time and they can learn so much more off each other. I am one person, they are seventeen. It really did make the lesson for me and I can only thank that student tremendously for their worthwhile and insightful contribution. Well I have left them a task to do while I am away. Given that I won't be there and thus I won't be able to write my thoughts on the lesson, the next contribution to this "journal" will come from the budding biologists themselves. After the lesson on Friday I hope they will find the time to write a comment or two below. How good would that be!
 * Lesson 22 (Tuesday 17th March 2009) **

 //I'll get the ball rolling... Feel free to add your own thoughts and feelings.//
 * __Lesson 23 (Friday 20th March 2009)__**

Friday's class was a (to a small degree) unproductive. After a few moments of confusion and misunderstanding we soon got into the swing of things and continued on our way to understanding the great notion of homeostasis. Whether this is seen as a good or bad thing I thought that if we had any questions or qualms we could not get them answered immediately. We had to result to doing what we thought was the best outcome, and although struggled to find reliable sources we had to search on our own. Fear not, Justine kept us all in line; however she did not suck the fun out of the lesson. No no, an anonymous student kept us entertained with an ample supply of musical tunes (which caused some tension in the class due to clashing preferences of genre). Soon enough though, the brawls we're broken up and students went back to their set work. There was no mucking around in the classroom, nobody was reading the newspaper or doing online Sudoku’s, we were all very disciplined and we created wonders. We look forward to showing you what we produced on Monday morning period 0! Get excited Vojtej, we'll be BEGINNING to prove our status as 'best class yet'. Biology 09, we'll create history together! The memoir of a valuable student- Olivia Sandler

although all groups knew what they were doing and tried to stay focused-there were many sacs on that day. personally my mind was not in biology. OS sumed up the lesson very nicely. looking forward to presentations tomorrow -GR

thanks for your comments here. I feel I have a pretty good idea about how you all approached (or didn't approach) the task. you have been clever in doing this as now that I am prepared for the worst, I am less likely to "growl" in Monday's lesson! VM