Thinking about Next Year’s Ecology Curriculum
This year I didn’t know where I was going. Here’s what I’m thinking for next year:
Quarter One: What does it mean to be a scientist?
- Learn about experimental design through designing and completing a science fair project
- Learn about experimental design/resource allocation/scientific communication by conducting an energy audit of the school and presenting our findings to the faculty
- In class exercises to include locating reliable sources, interpreting informational text, practicing how to effectively summarize a source, proper citation, peer review of experimental design and data collection, introduction to measurement methods (how to use the metric system and common lab tools like rulers, graduated cylinders, and thermometers)
Quarter Two: How do living things interact with one another and the environment?
- Learn about the structure of ecosystems
- Learn about how organisms within an ecosystem interact
- Learn about how the environment impacts organisms and vice versa
- Learn about how populations cycle in an ecosystem
- Learn about how chemicals cycle in an ecosystem
- Learn about how energy flows through an ecosystem
- Investigate biodiversity and its significance*
Quarter Three: What are living things made of?
- Basic biochemistry
- Overview of cell types and general cell structure
- Basic genetics
- Biotechnology (it just seems to fit nicely after genetics)
Quarter Four: How do living things and ecosystems change over time?
- Ecological succession
- Evolution
- Human impact on the environment, including climate change
I’d really like biodiversity to be a running theme. I’ll have to introduce it in first quarter. We’ll spend a lot of 2nd quarter on it, touch on it in 3rd quarter, and then spend a lot of time on it again in 4th quarter.
I have a lot of thoughts.
Classification
One of my biggest pet peeves in biology education is that there still exist teachers who are teaching straight taxonomy using “Kingdom/Phylum/Class/Order/Family/Genus/Species.”
Why does this bother me?
IT’S WRONG.
Biologists—practicing researchers—do not use this system anymore. It turns out to be highly arbitrary and not useful for testing hypotheses about relatedness. Delineating what is and isn’t a species is actually a tremendously complex question, and there are different ways to do it in different branches of biology. For example: the “classic” biological definition of a species said that any organisms that could successfully reproduce with one another and produce a fertile offspring belonged to the same species.
Neat enough, right?
WHAT ABOUT ALL OF THE THINGS THAT REPRODUCE ASEXUALLY?
What about hybridization—both natural and artificial? This definition of species is fine if you’re clear that that is what you are using, but it cannot be universally meaningful in biology.
The 5 kingdom system is defunct. “Protist” is not a biologically meaningfully designation. Why is it still being taught?
Ugh. I know why it’s still being taught. It’s still being taught because the way biologists really classify organisms—phylogeny—is poorly understood by many current science teachers
That must be it. There is no other reason to still be making kids memorize this bullshit Kingdom system. It’s so damn Victorian.
I guess the other possible explanation is that people think phylogeny is too complicated for kids but it turns out kids are great at phylogeny! I did phylogeny with my inclusion 9th grade ecology and they loved it. Highest scores of the year.
Phylogeny for everyone!
You might be wondering, “Why is this girl suddenly so upset about this? Just teach your blasted phylogeny and get on with things.”
Great question! It’s because I just went through the standardized exam I am required to administer to my biology students in June and there is a question that can only be answered by knowing “Kingdom-Phylum-Class-Order-Family-Genus-Species.”
I’m composing about three angry e-mails this evening about this. This is absurd. I am being forced to teach inaccurate science.
I’m not going to. I’m not going to subject my GT kids to a day of puttering through an archaic and arbitrary taxonomic system. We’ll do phylogeny, and the day before the test I’ll tell them that the county thinks it is critical that they memorize the biologically meaningless classification system devised in the 19th century and I’ll give them a hand out about it and they can memorize it or not. I’ll give them all a free point on the final to compensate for the question.
Who writes this nonsense? Ugh, I am beside myself. BESIDE MYSELF.
Ladies and gentlemen, my former mentor teacher.
Yep, the person who “taught” me how to teach. (But not really, luckily for my current students.)
Don’t get me wrong, my mentor and I had a very positive relationship—just very different ideas about what teaching should look like.
Journal of Emerging Investigators | JEI is a scientific journal for middle and high school scientists.
Definitely sharing with my kids!
And perhaps making submission requirement for next year’s STEM fair…planning and brainstorming, it never ever stops.
(via geofaultline)
Source: the-mighty-ribozyme
virginiacommonwealthuniversity:
VCU student Tyler Rhodes’s animation is chosen as Video of the week by Scientific American.
“Tyler Rhodes, a student in the animation program at Virginia Commonwealth University, wanted to create an evolution animation that wasn’t simply linear, but instead represented the true ‘tree-like’ process. So he enlisted the help of elementary school students and involved them in a type of game. They made sketches based on one original sketch, and allowed the resulting diversity to dictate survival of the fittest to future generations.”
KI represent.
The last “cockadoodledoo!” always gets me.
I don’t possess the technological finesse required to pull this off, but you can bet I will be doing a simplified, analog version of this with my kids.
Source: blogs.scientificamerican.com
Why do proponents want to pull down the fence and let school districts wander into the minefield? I suppose I can only guess. It certainly is not out of a deep and abiding concern for open scientific inquiry. Get away from matters touching on religious orthodoxy, and these proponents could not care less about the state of scientific debate. I can’t imagine it’s out of a real desire to promote spirituality. From my perspective, it looks like abuse to the Bible, contorting Genesis into a parody of science. It acknowledges, in word if not deed, fealty to the primacy of science while awkwardly attempting to stuff Biblical creation stories into the architecture of science which was not designed to hold such cargo.
SB 89 and Creation Science: Fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy and needs feeding
I have fallen in love with Masson’s blog. Any of you Indiana readers should add it to your RSS.
(via girlwithalessonplan)
(via girlwithalessonplan)
Source: masson.us
Brainstorming…
All right, I lectured on the light reactions of photosynthesis on Friday. Picture kids with totally glazed expressions, asking, “Are you serious? We need to know all of this?”, general feeling of panic, etc.
It’s a lot. I know. I’ve been there. I expected the panic. So tomorrow I’m not going to move on to the Calvin Cycle, not yet—I want to model the information we went over on Friday. I’m trying to work out a kinesthetic way to do this. Here’s what I’ve got.
My room is already divided cleanly in half—there’s a lecture side and a lab side. The line of desks that already divides the room will be the thylakoid membrane. Lecture side will be the stroma, lab side will be the lumen of the thylakoid (I’ll make signs for this). All desks except for the boundary row will be pulled to the opposite side of the room to create some space.
Transmembrane proteins—the photosystems, electron transport chain, and ATP synthetase—will be represented by students standing between the “membrane” desks. They’ll wear nametags: “Photosystem II,” “Photosystem I,” “Electron Transport Chain.”
Water molecules. I’d like 4 of them, each made of three students: two hydrogens and an oxygen. They will also have nametags. The “Hydrogen” signs will be double sided, with one side reading “Hydrogen” and the other reading “H+ [proton].” The water molecule will start out with an O flanked by two H’s—they will have linked arms to signify the covalent bonds. In addition, each H will carry a tennis ball in order to represent the electron.
OK. Step 1, hydrolysis. Student representing PSII pulls apart the H’s and O. The H’s hand over their electrons and flip over their nametags (now they’re H+’s!). The electrons get passed down the membrane proteins and are finally accepted by a student representing NADP+ [my smartasses will take issue here with the fact that the H+’s are many times larger than the electrons].
Meanwhile another H2O gets split apart. Now there are 2 O’s with nothing to do. They link arms to become O2 and exit the lumen. Electrons are passed down the ETC to another waiting NADP+.
There is now a relatively high concentration of H+’s in the lumen. They need to get past ATP synthetase to get to the stroma. Not sure how to represent this. Maybe instead of having a student be ATP synthetase the enzyme could just be represented by an open space flanked by an “ADP” kid and a “Pi” kid. As H+’s pass through the opening, they join the hands of an ADP kid and a Pi kid to create ATP.
If I only split two waters, then this will require me to have…16 kids playing roles. In my class of 18 I can just add proteins to the ETC. In my class of 27 I can run through it two or three times, changing up roles each time. Maybe I can let the kids direct it themselves.
I like the idea of doing stuff like this, but I wonder if for a process this complex it will hurt more than it helps. Although if it’s all we’re doing, we can run through it several times, and there will be lots of time for me to direct. We won’t be pressed for time. And then their homework can be to diagram the light reactions, and then we can move on to model-building for the Calvin cycle on Tuesday.
Doesn’t this make you want to teach biology?
Dear Elementary and Middle School Teachers,
If a student ever asks, “Is it true that our blood is actually blue?”
Please do their future biology teachers a favor and say, “No, it is not. Your blood is never, ever blue. It is always red. It may be a very dark, deep red if there’s not much oxygen present, but it is always red. Your blood is never blue. Say it with me: ‘My blood is never blue!’”
Because that is one misconception I am seriously over having to deal with. Today I had to convince two sections of seriously skeptical gifted students—who generally believe every single ridiculous thing I say—that their blood is always red. And what I get, invariably, is, “Mr. So-and-so” or “Ms. So-and-so” taught them explicitly that their blood is blue.
Who is doing this? And why? YOUR BLOOD IS NOT BLUE.
I don’t know what kind of science gets taught where before the 9th grade, but please do your part to nip this shockingly pervasive myth in the bud.
Cheers.
“Whatever this Was”
“I liked this,” said one of my top students today as she handed me her classwork. She was grinning and looked genuinely pleased with herself. “I liked this…whatever this was.”
This is the complete cell video that is discussed in the TED talk I posted earlier. I’ll show this to my kids for sure, but I’m turning off the narration when I do so they don’t get overwhelmed.
Again, I think this is a bit over their heads, but one of my goals for this year is to impress upon them the dynamism and complexity of biology. Not to make it to difficult for them, but to help them avoid the trap of thinking that cells are completely static and mostly empty space. I want them to appreciate how intricate, precise, and tremendously busy cells are.
Teacher, scientist, avid reader, observer
