biologist's+thoughts+10

It is my intention that I will keep a record of my thoughts after each lesson. Feel free to repsond 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 Link to biologist's thoughts 11 biologist's thoughts 12 biologist's thoughts 13 biologist's thoughts 14 biologist's thoughts 15

**Lesson 50 (Friday 12th June 2009)** Started Unit 4 and I could tell right from the start that most were not ready for it. They were in post-exam mode and pre-formal mode. With only two weeks worth of lessons, it is absolutely crucial that we can get right into the first section fo the course. Time is always on my mind, it is my nemisis when comes to teaching year 12. Got the sequencing totally wrong in this lesson. How could I expose them to the intricacies of DNA replication straight away. I should have held back but like them my mind was not clear today. At least they now know just how complicated concepts can get and the importance of them being able to really focus on everything I say or show. And its going to be like that for the remainder of the term. I should have just given them the basics of DNA replication and then some time to get their heads around it before introducing the finer detail. Oh well, I need to now turn their experience into a postive (although I think some of them made pretty good sense of it straight away). Next lesson will be about reinforcing what we covered and I guess there is benefit in them being exposed to the whole concept in one go. The thing is that these concepts take time to grasp which I tried to highlight today as well. So, it is important that they keep going over what we do in class, that includes the terminology and the process involved. I have already decided to alter the way the glossary is done. And I wil probably look at doing some other new things as well. I need to get them all working harder, especially those who took it a little too easy in unit 3.

Early start with period zero and there were half a dozen absent from the lesson. First time this has happened this year. My patience with some of them will be wearing thin if there isn't a damn good reason. Anyway, with only 40min I had decided to use a simulation activity to recap DNA replication. The use of licorice and jelly babies allows for something different. For me the real benefit was in seeing just how much they understood from last lesson. Those that focussed on the task and the underlying concepts were able to strengthen their understanding. I could see that in their models, conversations and expressions on their faces. But not all of them took this opportunity-again testing my patience. I know what lies ahead, they don't, and yet the wise words that come out of my mouth just seem to fall on deaf ears. I don't seem to be able to inspire them or even motivate them at the moment. Not that I should have to but it just would have been good to see some enthusiasm from them. Otherwise why should I spend the numerous hours preparing lessons for them. My patience is waning. As the old saying goes, there is only so much blood you can get out of a stone (or something like that). Tomorrow's lesson is all about gene expression. Yep, more terms, more confusion (even though they know a little already) and I will have to make sure I set plenty of work over the next week. And off course I am anticipating that the homework questions from the course notes will not have been done by some but that will be their loss.
 * Lesson 51 (Monday 15th June 2009) **

A full on lesson today. Started off going over one of the questions (old VCAA one) in the course notes. Yep I was right, maybe 2 or 3 of them had done the question. Damn formal! Anyway, it was valuable for those that had attempted the question and even those who didn't would have got something out if it I hope. The focus for the rest of the lesson was covering gene expression (aka protein synthesis) in detail. This is one of those areas that I am just not sure about how to cover for the first time. I know I will end up doing a variety of follow up activities with them but it is the actual initial verbal explanation of it that I keep thinking about how to do best. Managed to get through both transcription and translation, including mRNA splicing but didn't quite get to the activity which I have now given as H/W. So much terminology already and I know this was an issue for some of them in unit 3. It's simple-they have to focus on it straight away and keep revisiting it. I think the animations are crucial for this type of concept as it gives them the chance to visualise and make sense of the different structures and molecules involved. Anyway, it will be a week before we have another class. How much will they have done? The good thing is that when we do mutations it actually helps reinforce the process gene expression and DNA replication.
 * Lesson 52 (Tuesday 16th June 2009) **

**Lesson 53 (Monday 22nd June 2009)** Another full on lesson, although the mutations section is not as demanding. In fact, I like to do it now because it does get thinking about what we have done in the previous lessons on DNA and gene expression. I keep telling them that these two weeks are full on and it will take several goes at trying to make good sense of some of these concepts, particularly the numerous terminology. So, why is that none have done the homework regarding the new glossary on this wiki? What are they waiting for? They should have learnt from Unit 3 that keeping up to date with terminology makes a huge difference in helping them understand the concepts. The lesson went ok. There were lots of good questions, some I had to defer but those that particpated will have got the most out of the lesson. There were some that just didn't say anything and therefore are not challenging their interpetation of the information. They need to understand that when they do this and ask a question, that this can highlight a misconception. And this happened today which allowed me to clarify a really important point (mutations are to do with DNA changes, not the process of transcription and translation). Without the question I would not necessarily be able to empahsise this point. So, it is to their benefit that they ask questions that involve them having to probe their understanding. Much of today centred around showing a ppt that had the different types of mutations. Not very exciting but it may become more interesting to them when we look at gene technologies and diseases. I added some questions to the course notes this year that get them to go over the different types of mutations and revise DNA-mRNA-amino acid sequence. Will they have done this by the next lesson?

**Lesson 54 (Tuesday 23rd June 2009)** There were some really good things about today's lesson. So I will probably blab on a fair bit. First of all, I thought they (as a class) did really well in creating an accurate role play of meiosis. This was only after showing them a short animation on it as a stimulus. The key was that I only gave them about 10min to organise themselves. The really good thing was that it allowed a few of them (who felt they understood it) the opportunity to explain it to others. The entire class contributed in some way. But I did emphasize to them that while they may have participated in the role play that doesn't really mean they understood what was going on. So the suggestion is that they can do these sorts of things outside of class as a way of revision. I tried to stress to them that this sort of physical revision is a really powerful way of getting them to develop their understanding. Why meisois now? Well, I just feel like that if I go through it now, that they have chance over the holidays to do more work on it and more importantly it means that when I bring up Mendel's law of independent assortment later on, they will be thinking about meisois for the 2nd time. I did something consiously today as a result of my reflection of yesterday's lesson. Unless they read my thoughts above they probably won't appreciate why I did what I did. Anyway, after showing them a quick summary animation of mitosis, I quizzed a relatively quiet member of the class to come up with a question that I could ask someone that would test their understanding of mitosis. Now this immediately confused them a little (how many times do we ask a question that requires an answer that is a question?). So I rephrased the question and it was fantastic that the student came up with something valid and I immediately posed that question to another member of the class. I wonder if this surprised them a little as I don't think they would have been expecting this sort of activity right there and then (hmmm... should I make this a more regular occurrence). Anyway I then went on to ask another relatively quiet student the same sort of thing. So what was I doing here? I was trying to get some of the students who normally wouldn't be involved in class discussion to actually initiate it. And to do it in a way where there actually wasn't a correct answer that they had to worry about giving. I think this will do for reflecting on the lesson. I need to keep my mind fresh enough to deal with marking all those biol exams.

**Lesson 55 (Friday 26th June 2009)** Last lesson for the semester-it was all about them working in small groups to complete their slomations on one of three different concepts. It seemed that many had thought about how they would break up the concept into key events (I asked them to create a story board for H/W). They got straight into it and worked well. I had very little input and there was no need anyway. The lesson took care of itself. The only thing that is always a hinderance is the lack of resources. I had managed to scrounge two tripods but it would have been so much more effective to have five tripods and digital cameras, along with five laptops for each group to be able to download their images. As it turned out there were groups waiting for other groups to finsih using the equipment. Anyway, all groups got their images and now at least they have the term break to put them into moviemaker and add audio commentary hopefully. This is the scond time I am getting them to do a slomation, I just think that this sort of translation task can be so effective in them probing their understanding of the concept. The really useful thing is that they have to be able to work out what are the key elements of the concept, especially since there are many different levels to a biology concept. The other really useful thing is that as a class they are summarise these three crucial concepts and producing an artefact that they all can refer to later. I only have to go back to their immune response presentations. If they weren't unfamiliar with a particular area they could easily listen to a fellow student's explanation of it. As it turned out, the biol exam had questions that were directly answered by many of their presentations. Anyway, that's it, I look forward to seeing their finished slomation products. And I hope that while they do have a decent holiday, they do go over all the concepts we have covered in an intense last two weeks of term.