Science

We finished Chapter 33 on population growth and regulation. Topics included population growth curves, survivorship curves, age-structure diagrams, competition, and predator-prey and symbiotic relationships. For age-structure diagrams I had my two classes do an activity where they had to analyze and compare some diagrams. Today was a review class for their first test on Monday covering chapters 1 and 33. As part of the review I gave my two sections an activity on following directions. Basically it was a long list of mathematical problems. The first direction stated read all of the directions first and the last direction stated that you did not need to do any of the problems. The students enjoyed it. I will be curious to see if it makes any difference on tests/quizzes. Last year many of my students had trouble following directions. Any other suggestions on how to deal with this?

Next week we finish off ecology by covering trophic levels and energy flow/chemicals cycle.  

Similar to the 7th grade, the 9th graders are also learning about the scientific method and experimental design by growing bread mold. They started these experiments in lab this week and will complete them next week. We finished Chapter 1 of Mader’s Inquiry into Life which covers 7 characteristics of living things, classification of living things, and organization of the biosphere. Today we started our unit on ecology - starting with some basic definitions and a discussion of population growth.

This week we continued to discuss evolution (started just prior to the break). The lab was on dinosaur tracks and how scientists use them to determine speed. The students measured their own stride length, leg length and speed.  Hopefully pooling the results from all four biology sections will yield some interesting data.

Today they had a test on evolution.