The first day of a new semester can be a bit nerve-wracking . . . wondering what the students will be like, how the group dynamic will develop. Wondering if they’ll laugh at my stupid jokes. After my introductory lecture, though, I had a really good feeling about this group. Just ten students, and all of them jumped in right from the start.
I started out the same way I always start out my introductory bio classes – a lecture on “What is Life?,” and then we walk through the process of science, using calico cats as the context for exploring the scientific method: “Why haven’t I ever seen a male calico cat? I hypothesize that there aren’t any.” (SPOILER: there are male calicos; just not very many of them. We’ll answer that mystery when we get to inheritance). We also do a root word exercise where students use a glossary of root words, prefixes, and suffixes to decipher biology words, and the scientific names of a couple of animals: Haliaeetus leucocephalus, and Phascolarctos cinereus .Can you figure out who they are? (The root word glossary I hand out to my students can be found here).This reinforces the importance and usefulness of learning root words, particularly when dealing with big “scary” science words. Plus, it’s fun.
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