Discussion and Demonstration: A Effective Teaching Strategy for Biology, Assignments of School management&administration

Download Discussion and Demonstration: A Effective Teaching Strategy for Biology and more Assignments School management&administration in PDF only on Docsity! Brianna Schoessow GRAD 5910 Assignment #8 3/26/07 I. An Opportunity to Reflect 1. Synthesis of ideas/issues discussed or read i. Discussion and demonstration is a teaching strategy that allows students to make predictions and challenge their predictions through demonstration. ii. There are many advantages of discussion over lecture, mainly that it creates an atmosphere where students can be more active in the learning process. 2. New insights developed i. This process is a great way to direct discussion in a classroom by asking students to draw on prior knowledge to make predictions about what is going to happen. ii. The discussion portion of this strategy is more effective than traditional lecture because students are able to directly participate and “uncover” new ideas, as opposed to listening to someone “cover” material for 50 minutes. 3. Implications for teaching and learning i. There are so many great implications of discussion and demonstration in teaching and learning. For teaching, it is a great way to ensure that students are thinking about the material you are discussing. ii. For learning, discussion and demonstration asks students to draw on prior knowledge and think about new concepts by making predictions about what’s going to happen during the demonstration. This strategy is much more interactive than the traditional lecture method. 4. Additional comments i. I’m looking forward to utilizing this strategy in my own teaching this upcoming week. I have used it in the past, without knowing it, and am confident that my students will appreciate this method. II. Lesson Plan: EcoBeaker – Competition & coexistence between populations a. Set of Expectations i. All students will exhibit enthusiasm. ii. Students are involved in the learning process. iii. All students will participate in the discussion. iv. Students will write down their individual answers and predictions when I ask them to. v. They will examine the data provided by EcoBeaker. vi. Students will make predictions based on preliminary data produced by EcoBeaker. vii. Students should be willing to revisit predictions, using additional observations. viii. Students will be willing to make changes in their understanding of competition and coexistence among organisms. ix. Be willing to propose new problems and questions that we can pursue as a class. b. Appropriate Experiences i. We are going to be experimenting with competition for resources among three different species of phytoplankton. Brianna Schoessow GRAD 5910 Assignment #8 3/26/07 ii. Ask: What is phytoplankton? (green algae that are extremely small in size and are photosynthetic.) 1. Why do you think they are important? (because they are the major producers in an aquatic ecosystem.) 2. We will work with 3 different species of phytoplankton and one limiting nutrient in the computer program EcoBeaker. iii. We will be simulating an actual experiment where we will use sterilized dishes to make sure nothing but what we add is living in the dish. iv. We will add drops of nutrients at a fixed rate 20 drops per hour along with one or more species of phytoplankton. v. The three species we use we will be blue, red, and green and will be added to the dish at a rate of one drop per hour. Each drop has a 10% chance of containing a phytoplankton cell. vi. Once the cell is in the dish it will start growing and reproducing. It can photosynthesize by the light provided, but needs nutrients to reproduce. So they will be swimming around looking for the nutrients we add to their environments. They will reproduce by splitting in half to create 2 cells. vii. After we’ve grown phytoplankton in 3 trials, individually, we will start by adding 2 species to a dish at the same rate to see which wins (competition). Then we will add all 3 species. Then we will add one species faster than another to see what happens. viii. First, we are going to observe growth patterns for each species individually. (Show each species and have students draw population growth, having them note how efficiently each species uses nutrients.) ix. Have students predict interactions among all 3 species. Ask: What do you think will happen when all 3 species are put together? Make predictions. Ask students to share some of these predictions. x. Ask: How might we be able to change some of these variables so that all species can coexist? (change immigration rates and death rates) xi. Make predictions. Ask students to share some of these predictions. Run a few trials to see what happens. xii. Summarize what competition and coexistence means for different populations. c. Assessment i. Observe the amount of student participation in class and in their groups. ii. Collect sheet with predictions and reasoning for each trial. d. Evaluation i. Ask them to draw a figure of competition and a figure of coexistence on a future quiz. ii. On the exam, ask students questions about competition and coexistence using other organisms besides phytoplankton. III. Student Reactions – this discussion and demonstration will be implanted on Tuesday morning in class, so I can email you their responses if you would like. Just let me know.