Caterpillars at KABT Fall meeting.

KABT folks

We had a great time at the KABT Fall meeting at Cowley County College.
Thanks to Michelle, the presenters and others. During the field trip out at Chaplin Nature center a group of us came across large numbers of caterpillars defoliating catalpa saplings. The trees themselves were difficult to identify (since they were defoliated and small saplings) and we weren't sure about the caterpillars. I guessed that they were some sort of horn worm---well guesses sometimes workout. We apparently had found the dark form of the Catalpa sphinx (hormworms). Here's a link that includes images.

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/enpl/bulletins/catalpasphinx/catalpasphinx.htm
or
http://insects.tamu.edu/fieldguide/cimg305.html
or
http://entomology.unl.edu/ornamentals/pestprofiles/catsphinx.htm


Ours matches the dark form in the bottom of this image:

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/enpl/bulletins/catalpasphinx/photo6.htm

or in this image:

http://www.ag.auburn.edu/enpl/bulletins/catalpasphinx/photo2.htm

BW

Baby BioBlitz

I decided to create an additional post rather than just reply to Randy's original--comments can sometimes get a bit hidden.

The BioBlitz has a lot of potential for KABT members as a field trip theme--it's a chance to learn about KS biodiversity, become familiar with KS natural history, see neat places, meet great people, provide an important service for the state, have a lot of fun, and do a little science along the way. If successful we could make it a tradition--moving it around the state to specific habitats. Do a google search on Bioblitz to see what other projects have accomplished. We can too.

The board has suggested that our first BioBlitz take place at Kanopolis Lake in early June. The area around Kanopolis is a rich mid-grass prairie habitat dissected by canyons and ravines carved from the Dakota sandstone bedrock. These canyons and the springs create unique microhabitats--a blend of bur oak timber, mid-grass prairie and spring-fed pasture streams. Located in the center of the state, the area is an area of overlap for eastern vs. western species.

The idea of the bioblitz is that we (KABT members) would work hard for the weekend to collect, sample and catalog as many different kinds of organisms in each of these groups at Kanopolis. We'll need microscopes, permits, collecting equipment, binocular, cameras, etc. You'll need to bring camping equipment and food for yourself. We plan on camping at the lake and probably headquarter at one of the shelter houses (or perhaps my father's cabin.)
The planning and preparation is just beginning but time is short. Hopefully, we'll get going over the next couple of weeks otherwise we might want to think about waiting until next year to try out the bioblitz concept....

Here's a bit of a start: Here are the groups that Randy D. has proposed we sample during the bioblitz.

o Aquatic invertebrates

o Soil macroinvertebrates

o Birds---

o Mammals---

o Reptiles/Amphibians--

o Insects-

o Mosses, liverworts and ferns

o Flowering Plants--

o Fish--

We need feedback and volunteers to work in the various groups. Respond in the comments if you think you might be interested in any of these groups. Do we have too many? Is something missing? What should we do with the data? How can this help KS bio teachers? All kinds of things come to mind. Give us your feedback.

BW

Blog Revitalization

I apologize to anyone checking on this blog....the posts have been few and far between. In an attempt to revitalized this blog for the biology teaching community, I'm going to expand the official posters--much like Panda's Thumb. To this end I've invited the board members of the Kansas Association of Biology Teachers to become bloggers here at Teaching Biology. Hopefully, they will add more postings, create diversity and develop a resource for biology teachers.

To insure a wider geographical diversity if there are other affiliate biology organizations that would like to participate in this blog in some manner just let me know and we'll see what we can work out.


BW

An Idea for Autumn Inquiry

Autumn is a season with a distinct feel and smell. The combination of generally comfortable temperatures, the low angle sunlight, and the odors of the newly decomposing summer accumulation of vegetation create a unique atmosphere that is uniquely stimulating. The activity of the natural world is intensified as organisms react to the changing season—reproductively and energetically. And it is easier to observe many organisms not usually seen since the vegetation is dying back. One such organism could very well serve as an inspiration for student research and inquiry.

From mid September to early November, take a walk along the wooded edge of almost any field in the eastern two thirds of KS and you might notice small twigs lying on the ground under the overhanging tree limbs. You might also find these twings along the ever increasing suburban walking trails where these trails pass beneath overhanging trees. These twigs may be from any number of trees from elm, hackberry, and honey locusts in the west to hickories, pecans and persimmons in the east. These are definitely twigs, usually no more than 15 mm in diameter at their thickest and about as long as your arm. As twigs there is not much to call your attention to them except for a couple of unusual observations. You’ll notice that they still have their leaves attached. In fact they are the brown, dead leaves or the dried green leaves of branches separated from the tree while still green—not the leaves of autumn. As you pick up one of these twigs you will notice that the butt-end appears to have been cut from the tree. This is the sign of twig girdlers.

Twig girdlers (Oncideres cingulata) are long-horned beetles (Cerambycidae) with an interesting life cycle. They range throughout much of the eastern U.S. In September adult females lays eggs towards the end of twigs of various hardwoods. After laying 3 or more eggs on an outer twig the female then girdles the twig by cutting about halfway through the twig with her mandibles. Later, fall winds in autumn help to separate the twigs from the tree—thus why they are found beneath trees this time of the year. The eggs are in the twig. They hatch in late fall or winter (at least in the southern states). The larval stage is spent entirely within the twig. The twig is food source and protective shelter. The larva pupates in late summer. The adults emerge shortly after and the cycle renews.

I’ve introduced numerous students to twig girdlers during autumn walks and fieldwork for biology classes. I’ve found them wherever I have taught—usually on campus or very near. In the past I’ve just focused on the interesting life history but recently it occurred to me that this organism might be a very fruitful and accessible organism for student-centered research.

The unique life history of this organism offers a rich source of questions for student study. They twigs are easy to find in the fall. In a very short time one student or a group of students can collect a large sample of girdled twigs from different tree species over a wide range of habitats. It’s fairly simple to determine the number of eggs on each twigs and it’s also easy to take measurements of the dimensions of the twigs. I expect that raising the eggs to larva to adults should be relatively easy, also. Quick, accessible questions come to mind. Is the type of tree selected as a host correlated with the size of twig selected? Eggs Laid? Pupae success? Is there a correlation between size of twig and offspring produced? What about parasitoids and parasites? What predators to the larva contend with?

If you are intrigued about twig girdlers you can learn more about them at: http://www.ag.auburn.edu/enpl/bulletins/twiggirdler/twiggirdler.htm

If you find some twigs near campus take your students for a stroll and see if you can’t get a good round of questions coming from your students about this interesting phenomenon. If you or your students find this organism interesting enough for further research I’d be interested to know. Good luck.

Retirement

Last Saturday, my wife, Carol and I crashed a party. Mind you, this is not something we normally would do but I just had to see the surprise retirement party for John Wachholz put on by his wife and his former students. We weren’t invited because we were not former students--but we are—everyone who knows John has learned from John. You see, John has taught biology for 43 years with passion and courage and I know of no other teacher who continually receives “thank-you for changing my life” letters from former students. John and I have shared many phone calls—often weekly—where we discussed the challenges of teaching biology. John’s dedication to doing the right thing and passion for teaching have always been an inspiration to me.

We crashed the party because we wanted to meet some of his students who I had heard so much about. In fact, in was one of his former students that let me know about the get-together. The party was a perfect fit. We assembled at the Land Institute in the barn and John was caught totally unaware as he was escorted to the “Land” by his step-daughter, Linda, and family. As normal, John’s own passion and caring for his students meant that any attempt on his part to convey his appreciation had to be interpreted through his tears of joy and his breaking voice. John is not afraid to wear his emotions on his sleeve. His former students proceeded to give short talks about what John had meant to them. Inspirational. You might expect that at least the biologists (there were at least three with biology PhD’s) would have talked mostly about the biology they learned. Au contraire—mostly his students talked about John being an inspiration, about how he got them to think and how he made them realize how important they were. The most used phrase that I heard all night was some form of, “I see the world through his eyes.” or “I hear his voice in my head.” You see, John, has always challenged students, colleagues and friends to think about their impact on this planet, their role in society and to be productive as an individual.

I’ve often said that no profession (other than health care) probably has as much emotional up and down as teaching does. Even a great teacher like John can find themselves questioning what they are doing and their own abilities in the face of the different challenges that face an educator each and every day. You can have five great classes in a row and be feeling like you’ve really had an impact only to have the entire day’s accomplishment spin out of control during last hour as you encounter one recalcitrant, uninvolved student that you can’t seem to reach. For John, these moments always weighed heavily. It’s probably a character of outstanding teachers. The evening had to be an incredible validation for John. John’s wife, Bette Sue, talked of courage. It truly does take courage to be a teacher like John.

John’s generation is retiring. Just this year in Kansas, John, Ernie Brown and Pat Wakeman are retiring. In recent years, Stan Roth, Harry McDonald and Terry Callendar retired. This generation has been very active in professional societies. All of the previously mentioned folks have served as KABT, the Kansas Association of Biology Teachers, president or as board members. Stan was for president for NABT. I'm sure I'm forgetting some and I apologize.

John was a member of the board of KABT, president, newsletter editor and treasurer for much of the last 25 years of his career. Over the years, John hosted a number of workshops and meetings at his school to share with other teachers—particularly new teachers.

The biology teachers of John’s generation were the product of the federal government efforts to infuse science education with real science during the ‘60s and 70’s. Many biology these were able to attend numerous NSF sponsored summer workshops where they learned biology content, how to do biology, and how to teach biology. A survey of Presidential award winners indicated that the two things that most of the awardees attributed to their individual success were NSF workshops and professional science teacher organizations like NABT. John fits that description as well. I’m really concerned that we are turning away from these time tested and proven methods of biology teacher professional development—particularly the summer workshops. Of course there are other sources of summer workshops and I encourage biology teachers to take advantage of them. The best place to learn about these opportunities or to even create such opportunities for biology teachers is as a member of a professional science teachers organiztion. John would certainly concur. New and old biology teachers, please, join your local and national professional organizations. I guarantee that you and your teaching will benefit--and so will the biology teaching community.

KABT Ashfall Field Trip

Blog Revival:

I can’t really believe how long it has been since we last posted to this blog. I knew that as biology teachers trying to maintain a blog would be difficult so I thought I’d share the load—still too big of job while class is in session. However, it is summer and I’m on a leave of absence so I’ll try to revive this blog….

Kansas Association of Biology Teacher Spring Field Trip Report:

Each spring for the past 4 decades the KABT has led field trips to sites of interest throughout Kansas. Once in a while we also venture to adjoining states. This year the board elected to go to Ashfall State Park in Nebraska. The itinerary and links can be found at: http://kabt.org/F_Trips/KABT_Spring_Field_Trip_2005.htm

Field trip members included: Sandy Collins, Paula Donham, Carol Williamson, Josie Stiles, Shari McDougal, Eric Kessler and family (Christin, Mara, Rebecca, and Owen) and myself, Brad Williamson. It’s a long road trip to Ashfall. This, along with the weather forecast doubtlessly limited our attendance.

We all took our own routes and met at the Nebraska State Museum on the Lincoln campus at about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday morning. This museum is really a gem.

Nebraska is one of the best locations in the world for studying the Cenozoic and mammal evolution. I organized this trip based on the premise that mammal fossil history has great untapped, educational potential.
While dinosaurs and dinosaur evolution serve to really motivate students it seems to me that many of my students regard dinosaurs as almost fictional characters. This is not as big of a problem with mammal fossils—everybody connects to “warm, fuzzies.”

We spent a couple of hours touring the fossil exhibits. The museum has a great display of mammoth and mastodon fossils.

We were amazed at the diversity of elephants found in Nebraska. A bonus was a new exhibit of Ivory Billed Woodpeckers and Eskimo Curlews as well as Joel Sartore’s Photograph exhibit—extraordinary. The museum displays helped us to get our arms around the diversity of extinct animals that once populated the Nebraska plains and helped us build a time framework to begin understanding the fossil history of mammals.

After a quick lunch we drove on to Niobrara State Park. This park is at the confluence of the Niobrara River and the Missouri Rivers. It was one of the sites described in Lewis and Clark’s Journal. The panorama is spectacular. We timed our arrival to take advantage of their Saturday night Bison Burger cook out. The park personnel invite park goers to a BBQ and program each Saturday night. The food was great and the program was interesting. A local mountain man enthusiast shared his view of the history of the area and his mountain man gear.

Earlier, I mentioned that the weather forecast may have contributed to low attendance. The forecast called for strong to severe thunderstorms with possible tornados. Most of the tornado activity was forecast for much further south. One of the advantages of the wide open plains is that you get to watch storms develop in late afternoon. While we were eating at the BBS the thunderheads were building off to our south. By the time we were done we thought we’d best be getting our campsites ready for the impending storm. We dodged the first storm...

But later, just after sundown, one of the park rangers came by and informed us of an approaching storm, 20 minutes away, with high winds and hail. He strongly suggested we take shelter in the bathhouse in the RV campground. We all loaded up in our cars to get to the bathhouse but it was actually almost 2 miles away—the storm hit before we made shelter. Blinding rain, golf ball sized hail and 60+ mph winds made for a very hazardous situation. We could not see the roads to drive on and to make matters worse we were on steep hills. Luckily we all eventually made shelter or lasted through the storm in our vehicles. After the storm, Josie (a second-year teacher) accused me of creating a stressful situation just to facilitate the transfer all they’d learned into long-term memory. (If it works I’ll have to try it again, sometime….) We returned to our tents about 12:30—the tents were all standing and we slept well.

After drying out, showering and breakfast at a local café, we loaded up and headed to Ashfall. I had prearranged for a guided program but had not counted on the program being led by Michael Voorhies, himself.

Mike is the guy who discovered Ashfall. His enthusiasm for paleontology and science is truly contagious. The uniqueness of Ashfall is that the dozens of specimens are largely complete and articulated—a very rare occurrence. Mike’s inspiration to complete an on-site museum with the specimens in situ and not transferred to a museum display was brilliant.

The impact on learning is immense and especially for biology teachers. We all left with books, ideas and inspiration for how to supplement our evolution units and most of all we all wanted to volunteer to help with future digs at Ashfall.

While an old standby I think that a revisiting of the evolution of horses would have a number of advantages for evolution education. Several of the teachers were very impressed with a simple display of the lower legs of the 5 species of horse found at Ashfall compared to the modern horse.

Here is a reference to a PBS site that might provide a beginning. http://www.pbs.org/wildhorses/wh_origin/wh_origin_intro.html and another from Kathleen Hunt: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol.html

I think that a good measure of the quality of a place is the books for sale in the gift shop. In my opinion the books for sale at this little gift shop speak volumes about the folks that run it. I said as much to Rick Otto, park superintendent, and he expressed his appreciation and indicated that he had selected books to be informative and educational along the themes of Ashfall.

Ashfall is truly remote from the general flow of travelers across our country but by all means try and find time sometime to make it to the excellent resource—you won’t be sorry.

Challenge: To the KABT members attending this field trip enter your impressions of the trip by posting a comment to this post—just click on “Post a Comment”

Formative Assessment Tools

Specifics for Chris Willems question:

In “Finding Answers to Questions” I indicated that my own frustration with trying develop fly fishing skills had led to a greater empathy for my student’s frustrations with learning biology. Here, I will lay out a few of the changes that I have implemented in my classes over the past 3 years to create an environment that helps students to work on their own models and strategies for improved learning. Generally, I have tried to increase non-threatening student opportunities for formative assessment. A caveat: earlier, I indicated that I was no where near becoming an expert fly caster but I have developed the ability to appraise my own casting more effectively which greatly speeds up my own progress. The same can be said about developing a classroom environment for learning—I’m no where near finding the right environment for every student but I do know I’m on the right track.

At a school board meeting, four years ago, I listened to a presentation by our art coordinator, defending funding for art education. She cited research that indicated that students in the arts are uniquely self-motivated to practice and critically evaluate their own work. I began to take umbrage with this claim but the more I thought about it the more I had to agree. My first conclusion was that perhaps there is something fundamentally different (regarding motivation) about the subjects normally taught in the arts and the academic core. But the more I thought about it I decided that the real difference was in how the arts are taught—they practice and practice and practice some more. In the core academic course we generally make assignments that help students develop skills but usually each assignment is graded and there is very limited opportunity for iterative practice to polish the skills needed. I decided to add more opportunities for practice in my class.

Some Specifics:

Years ago, I decided to create a grading system that weighted all test scores as 50% of the final grade and daily/lab work as 50%. Traditionally, my summative tests are difficult while I have usually been more lenient on the daily/lab grades, allowing students multiple opportunities for satisfactory completion. I mention this, only because this grading system pre-adapted my class so that the following strategies work well within my classroom structure.

Also, each of these strategies relies on technology. Technology allows me to extend my interaction with students beyond the classroom space and beyond the classroom schedule.

Online Practice Tests:

Three years ago, I started preparing online practice tests for students. I’m convinced they have made a big difference in student learning—or at least their ability to indicate their learning to me. Many test generating software packages have web-based tests as one of their options. Early on I simply posted these tests on my own private site. Later I used the school’s web servers and now I publish these practice tests within our school’s Blackboard environment. For every test I prepare a quick practice test (sometimes two) that the students can take as many times as needed. No one receives a grade for these attempts. This is very important. Students are instructed to focus on the questions—and not the answers. To encourage and reward them for taking the practice tests I use the questions on the summative test they have later (along with unique, new questions). This works in a similar manner to the old teacher strategy of letting students create their own “cheat sheets.” The difference is that the students develop their own test taking strategies that also pay off when it comes to the standardized testing environment we are in, now. After we take a test, I want my students to be able to tell me how they did on the test. Confidence is huge in testing success. One caution: students themselves are not used to this environment, yet. It takes about a semester before the majority of my students start using this opportunity.

Online Web Activities:

I am fortunate in that I have co-authored a biology curriculum (Exploring Life, Prentice Hall) that features specific web activities coordinated with each concept of each chapter of the text. These online activities open up a number of possibilities for student learning. The obvious examples of animations and interactive are the key advantages but the 24 hour and nearly universal access are very important advantages as well. I’ve had student keep up with their assignments while traveling overseas or on long family trips. Most importantly, students can return to the web site multiple times to review the concepts. It is pretty easy to spot those students who suddenly realize how important the web site is—their test performance spikes.

Individual Student Response Systems:

I’ve been using these in my classroom for three years now. The system I use is eInstruction’s: CPS system. ( http://www.eInstruction.com ) These systems should be part of each classroom’s toolkit. They allow for anonymous (non-threatening) student input in the classroom. The data is immediately available and is useful for helping students evaluate and reflect on their own learning. I’ve utilized these to introduce topics, imbedded in instruction, as review and to explore controversial topics. I’m convinced that this technology is here to stay. In my classroom we use the iterative process of Peer Instruction developed by Eric Mazur:

(http://mazur-www.harvard.edu/education/educationmenu.php )

The students are presented with a question (on overhead, by LCD projector, or orally). The classroom is polled as the students enter their individual answers to the question without discussion. The results of the poll are presented to the class in the form of a histogram for all to see. As the instructor I evaluate the results and decide how to proceed. If the class has mastered this concept we move onto the next concept. If the class is divided (the usual) I ask the students to form groups and discuss the possible answers to the question. This peer group interaction is very revealing and constructive. A new poll is taken—usually with positive results and powerful learning. Occasionally, the results provide feedback to me that I need to re-teach the material. Almost always the re-teach concepts are concepts that are very prone to preconceived models of the world that students bring to class. The ISR systems have truly changed the landscape of my classroom.

One caution: Like any tool the ISR systems can be overused and abused but taken in moderation and properly applied they are very powerful formative learning tools.