Summer School – Day 14 and 15 – Ecosystem Services and Food Security

July 20, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

The penultimate day of the summer term! Compared to some of our other days, this one was pretty low key, but we did have a little unexpected adventure.

I’d intended to lecture on ecosystem services in the morning, and then watch one of my favorite “teaching” films, “Hurricane on the Bayou.” And this is mostly what happened, except for a little detour part way through. When I arrived on campus, I noticed some flyers posted in the science building – one of the biology grad students, Vanessa Dodge, was giving her thesis defense. Not only was I really interested in her research, as I’d been up to the field site in Point Reyes a couple of times, but I also thought this would be a good way for my students to learn a bit more about the process of science. So, I gave them the choice – do you want to listen to me lecture all morning? Or do you want to go hear someone else talk for a while? They voted in favor of variety, so about an hour into the day we headed upstairs to the thesis defense.

Summer School – Day 13 – Climate Change, Biomes and Food Webs

July 19, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

We covered a lot of ground today. We started out with a lab activity, since we hadn’t had time to explore biomes fully the previous day. I started them out with a super cool Google Earth file that I found here. One of the resources is an interactive Google Earth map with layers that show various aspects of climate – average winter temperatures, average summer temperatures, that sort of thing – along with a layer that shows the location and distribution of biomes, worldwide.

Summer School – Day 12 – Human Evolution, and Intro to Ecology

July 18, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Not a whole lot to post about this day . . . once again (as usual on exam days), I didn’t take any photos. Our morning was taken up with the third exam, including an exam review session. No Pictionary this time, though . . . instead, I put together a game of Jeopardy, using this awesome Powerpoint template.

Summer School – Day 11 – Vertebrate Diversity

July 14, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Another favorite day! And another rotation lab. Today’s lectures focused on the diversity of vertebrates. We started out with chordates, and then followed the major groups all the way through their transition to land. In the morning, we covered fish, amphibians, and (some) reptilian vertebrates. Then, we stopped for some lab activities that allowed them to explore further the transition to land.

First, an activity from the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, “A Strange Fish, Indeed,” This interrupted case study describes the extraordinarily COOL discovery by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer of a living Coelacanth – a sarcopterygian fish from an order believed extinct for 70 million years. This is one of my very, very favorite biology stories, and I did touch on it briefly in lecture, but working through this case study, which allowed the story to unfold gradually, was wonderful. On the whole, I’ve found that the case study activities put out by the NSF are excellent. I used this one as is, without any modifications.

Summer School – Day 10 – Plants and Invertebrates

July 13, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

I know I keep saying this, but THIS IS ANOTHER OF MY FAVORITE DAYS OF THE SEMESTER! Today was pretty much fun from start to finish. In the morning, lecture on the diversity of plants, including the various adaptations that allowed plants to make the transition from the ocean onto land. After the lecture, I’d arranged for us to have a tour of the Tropical Greenhouse on campus. The greenhouse is across campus from the science building, so along the way I gave them a little walking tour of some of my favorite plants on campus, including a few Ginkgo trees, a Cycad (my all time fave), several ferns, redwood trees, and the Butterfly Garden. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any pictures along the campus tour, but I have loads of pics from our greenhouse tour! We were welcomed to the greenhouse by Kandis, who provides instructional support for the Biology Department, and she is an exceptionally gracious hostess!

To be honest, for most of my time at SSU, I didn’t know we had a tropical greenhouse. It was only when I was teaching this class last summer that I found out about it, but now I want to bring as many students here as possible. It’s not all that big, but there are so many GORGEOUS plants!

Summer School – Day 9 – Speciation and Pond Water Lab

July 11, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy 1 Comment

Today, it was time to leave microevolution behind, and talk about how new species form. Now that they understand how adaptations and natural selection cause populations to change, it’s an easy step to understanding how this can lead to speciation. To drive that concept home, I put together a speciation activity based on this cool online natural selection simulation: http://sepuplhs.org/high/sgi/teachers/evolution_act11_sim.html.

The simulation tracks populations of birds on an island, to see how natural selection and mutations can cause phenotypic changes. You start with 3 populations of 300 birds each, and follow them through 1,000,000 years of evolution. Throughout this time, the simulation makes a notification any time a mutation takes place, along with the overall effect – was it positive or negative? Did it help to increase, or decrease the population?

Summer School – Day 8 – Evidence of Evolution

July 11, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Today we covered sort of a hodge-podge of things, but there was a common thread – ways in which we can see evidence of evolution, both on long time scales, as well as short ones.

First things first, though – Exam #2. Before the exam, we played a game of Pictionary, using the following prompts:

Allele	Anaphase II	Character vs Trait	Directional Selection
Disruptive Selection	Function of tRNAs	Gene Flow	Genetic Drift
Haploid Cell	Homologous Chromosomes	Incomplete Dominance	Integumentary System
Metastatic Tumor	Nervous System	Phases of Mitosis	Prophase I
Recessive Pedigree	Replication	Transcription	Translation

Summer School – Day 7 – Darwin and Natural Selection

July 6, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Started out the day by picking up where I left off on my Darwin lecture, and then moved on to adaptations, and the principles of natural selection. I frame most of this discussion around the Oldfield Mice experiment, partly because it’s a perfect example of a scientific study that demonstrates the effects of selection on populations, but also because the mice are so cute! I end up using these mice as an example all the way through evolution and speciation, so I have a bunch of slides I’ve animated showing all sorts of things happening to the mice. (Selective forces, like being caught by a hawk when the fur doesn’t match the substrate; and, later, random forces, like severe weather).

Oh! I almost forgot to mention that this is the lecture where I reveal probably the single most important biology fact of all . . . the secret connection between Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. It’s common knowledge that they were born on the exact same day (February 12, 1809), but I’ve uncovered a surprising bit of information that is much less well known . . . the image below should make it obvious what I’m talking about (all photos were found on the internet, so obviously they must be completely legit).

Summer School – Day 6 – Inheritance

July 5, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

This is always one of the favorite topics of the semester – Mendelian genetics, and inheritance. We cover a bunch of really interesting stuff, including questions like:

“Can two brown-haired people have a blond baby?”
“Why do I have green eyes and my sister has blue eyes?”
“Do twins have the exact same DNA?”
“What are the genes that determine how you look?”
“Can you choose which traits your child will have?”

We also talk about pedigree analysis, and inherited diseases, and Punnett squares (okay, they don’t usually love Punnett squares haha). But still, loads of cool stuff! My lectures on the topic are pretty well set, but I needed to figure out some lab activities. The one activity I use with my lecture-only course is designed as a homework activity, but it was pretty simple to restructure it into a rotation lab. I also found a few additional things for them to do, and explore the subject of inheritance.

Summer School – Day 5 – Cell Division

July 4, 2017June 27, 2024 - Wendy Leave a comment

Today? The wonders of cell division! In lecture, I framed mitosis in the context of cancer: in order to understand unregulated cell growth, we need to understand how cells operate the rest of the time. As for meiosis, that’s the gateway to understanding reproduction. (Or maybe reproduction is the gateway to understanding meiosis? Either way, they’re intimately connected). This is a pretty important concept in biology, and while I don’t think they’ll need to be able to remember all the little details on into the future, I did want them to have a really clear understanding of what happens during cell division, so we attacked it in a variety of different ways.

First: A draw-along. I interrupted lecture, and asked them all to pull out a piece of paper. Then, using Skitch on my computer, I drew out the phases of mitosis, and had them draw along with me.

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Tag: summer school