Biology Lessons Part 2: Population Biology
Lessons for teaching biology to prospective elementaryschool teachers will be posted at this site. These lessons were developedin a biology course (Natural Sciences 412C, Process and Inquiry in the LifeSciences) for senior Liberal Studies majors at San Diego State University.The lessons can readily be adapted by practicing teachers for use in elementaryschool classrooms. They require simple materials.
The Population Biology lessons include:
Audience & Background. These are NOT interactive, on-line lessons, but rather may be printed for use with prospective and practicing K - 8 teachers. (NOTE: before printing these pages, go to the "Page Setup" option in Netscape and set the header to show page numbers. Also, we recommend setting Palatino as your proportional font in your General Preferences ). The underlying Instructional Philosophy is constructivist and should be reviewed before using these lessons. The lessons are designed to produce conceptual change and address some common alternative conceptions. Many of these lessons can be adapted for use in elementary school classrooms. Relevant Benchmarks from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) are given at the end of the lesson. These national standards indicate the grade levels at which these ideas should be taught. Each lesson has six parts, including a biology lesson, knowledge mapping exercise, and glossary for students and for teachers, a teachers' guide for both the biology lesson and knowledge mapping exercise, and a table of persistent alternative ideas.
