Notice that Donna, who joins the conversation next does not have to wait for Dave to answer Sheri's question. She describes the first day activity in her biology class. She also refers to Mikes' classroom volume problem as she describes a volume activity she uses with her students. Notice also that both Mike and Donna briefly introduce themselves, personalizing their messages.

Subj: Biology first day
From: Donna

Hi Mike and others,
I teach biology, zoology and science research in a inner city high school in Denver Colorado. My biology students are primarily freshman and sophomores. In biology, I fill the class room full of stuff. It not unusual to drag out a 50 to 100 things. I spend the last few days of my summer in the mountains gathering interesting stuff. Moss, lichen, skulls, shells lot of different kinds, fungi quite unique assortment, animal feces, plants, pond water, fossils, minerals, seeds, living creatures etc. The activity is tell me what is living, what we mean by living. It's a great time to introduce the concepts of organic versus inorganic, and just what a life process is. We end up discussing growth, reproduction, feeding, respiration, locomotion, assimilation, etc. The students are encouraged to write down all the questions they have while examining the stuff. They exchange lists. They begin to know that scientists are always curious and they ask good questions. One of the main focuses of my class is that science is more questions than answers.

The volume of the room activity is great. I used something similar later. When we are try to grasp the metric system. We measure the Volume of our room too. I want my students to see the relationship between metric length, volume, and mass. All student are ask to build a box a centimeter on each side. I given them no plans and they finally figure out how to build it. The use lots of stuff that I provide and attempt to make it water tight. Lots of arguments. They then fill it with water and measure it to see that 1 cubic centimeter equals one milliliter. We then conduct a lab to measure the mass of distilled water. This is great because these students often are facing their first triple beam balances. They all want to use the electronic balance. They forget to measure the beakers dry first. They regroup , dry out the beaker, re measure the water, and start over. Freshman in biology need to learn the laboratory equipment. They need to learn to think before the leap into the activity or project. They need to learn how to work co-operatively. They finally relate distilled water as1 cc= lml= 1 gram at standard temperature and pressure. From there the project is to use meter sticks or metric tapes to find mass of water in our aquarium or some try to calculate the weight of water in our school pool assuming a constant slope. Problem solving is a really important way to begin the year. What do you other biology teachers do??

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