biologist's+thoughts+14

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 10 biologist's thoughts 11 biologist's thoughts 12 biologist's thoughts 13 biologist's thoughts 15

I think the session went better in the first half. The activities to investigate the founder effect and genetic drift kept them engaged. It is an absolute must that they answer the questions straight away for H/W. Although this part of this course is not heavy with theory they do need to be very clear on the different terms, such as gene flow, gene pool, genetic drift, founder effect and population bottleneck. I think they struggled in the second half of the session. Which makes me wonder if it really is worthwhile trying to do a 3 hour session. I would have thought that a 20min break would have allowed them to come back focussed. But for some it didn't really happen. Hmmm... Anyway, I was able to get to introducing speciation and next lesson we will further cover this very difficult concept.
 * Lesson 73 (Sunday 23rd August 2009) **

Hmmm... I really find this area of the course difficult to teach. It seems so dry to me and coming up with a way to make it interesting to the class is a challenge. Anyway, the first half of the lesson was me trying to give them a bit of an idea about polyploidy (instant speciation). It was so obvious to me that when I introduced the idea of non-disjunction that I was losing some of them. Why? because I was making an assumption that they are clear on meiosis. And not all of them are. But... there were no questions, are they too scared? Hmmm... They don't want to be seen as not knowing something that has already been covered. So, I hope they at least they see me outside of class. I do think that the "heterozygous advantage" interested some of them. It is a really neat example of how the environment can select for certain phenotypes (and genotypes). Hmmm...I seem to be writing "some of them" a lot. To introduce the idea of evolution on a large scale, I gave them an activity that I tried last year (because of the IWB). It worked really well last year and I did have concerns about whether it would be as effective with a larger class. In the end I think it did work well, it got them to explore their prior knowledge of how life on earth has changed. They discussed ideas, they compared their ideas with other groups' ideas. So, I was quite happy with this. If anything, I wish I had left just a little more time for further discussion. I think some of them would have been surprised as to just how much they could work out without any help from me.
 * Lesson 74 (Monday 24th August 2009) **

Basically today's lesson was about giving a powerpoint presentation on the types of evolution. I felt content with the way I explained. the concepts. I specifically emphasised the key terms and continually rephrased the way I said something. I wonder if they noticed this strategy today. I wonder if it became monotonous to some of them. I guess part of trying to effectively communicate ideas (which at some stage needs to be done by the teacher, no matter how often you might have engaging activities prepared for them) requires me to give them hints as to what is important. Anyway, there were lots of good questions and it was really great that one of them, who doesn't say too much in class (if anything), when put on the spot by me actually came up with a really good response to a challenging question. They have plenty of worksheets to go through to try and reinforce what we did in class. The theory is not really difficult so I hope they can feel confident about this part of the course. The only negative aspect of the class was the last 25min. I gave them this time to start working through some questions but too many of them didn't utlise it to the fullest. It won't be happening again. Class time is too precious.
 * Lesson 75 (Tuesday 25th August 2009) **

voj, i was thinking maybe we should do the sunday session on sunday (30th Aug) from 1:30 only because theres such a big gap between the english lesson and the current biol time ..just a thought miss nice :)

All I can say is that my introduction to evidence for evolution was pretty lame. I resorted to a powerpoint that I have used in the past which is Ok but I know I could have done better. I was really just giving them a glimpse of each area (I really think the constraints of time are affecting my delivery) and now that I look back on it I didn't even give them any task (translation) to try and reinforce ideas. The only upside was that the last 30min involved showing them a really interesting video. I wonder if they found it interesting as well. I know some of them are finding this part of the course really interesting. Even then I just got them to watch it, there was no associated task (like answering questions etc). I know it is difficult to maintain high standards in preparation and having engaging activities every single lesson but. Stuff it, there is no but.
 * Lesson 76 (Friday 28th August 2009) **

I gave them the opportunity to work through questions as preparation for the SAC tomorrow. I guess the consideration here is that if I try to cover the next part of the course the day before their SAC how beneficial is that? Because I know that it is unlikely they will go over the concepts that night as they will be focussed on preparing for the SAC. The really pleasing part of the lesson was that they really did use it well. Some discussed questions with others, others worked on their own, some asked me questions and one of them willingly put up their answers to last year's SAC (which i gave as revsion) onto the IWB for all to see. This allowed for discussion and I was then able to post these onto the wiki. So, overall if I look at it from this popint of view, it was one of the most effective uses of class time I have had this year. Now I just have to wait and look forward to assessing their SAC responses.
 * Lesson 77 (Monday 1st September 2009) **

**Lesson 78 (Tuesday 2nd September 2009)** Evolution SAC was today. They seemed to be okay with it. No one has come to me with any feedback yet. I think the length was fine, they were certainly kept busy but I just want to make sure that I give them as much opportunity to be able to show their understanding. Maybe they could post their thoughts on the SAC here.

I thought that the SAC was really interesting. I found myself engrossed in the information and going "wow, thats pretty cool". It was quite long but I didnt find time an issue, i rather just found it enjoyable to work through and kinda, didnt want to finish. Naww. I didn't find any quetions that really confused me, rather they were challanging and made me think. Anyways, now just have to hope that my answers were decent! :) Woohoo! A response. thx for the feedback. In some weird way, I actually do want you to be interested in the questions that I put on a SAC. In other words I don't want you to be bored. But sometimes what I think is interesting may not be what you will find intersting. I know that you have already mentioned to me that you find this part of the course quite interesting. Thus I am pretty confident that you will have done well. More often than not if you are really interested in something you tend to endulge in the learning process much more and therefore make sense of the concepts better. VM


 * Lesson 79 (Friday 5th September 2009) **

Only a 40min lesson this morning, so I really just wanted to give them an intro to human evolution. Normally I would introduce it with them looking at the series of hominin skulls but that will be for next lesson (when more time is available). I really didn't have a firm direction that I wanted to go in this lesson. So I found myself pausing quite regularly and thinking about what to do next, I guess I was trying to feed off the class' reactions. Hmmm...