The Week of 10/28-11/1

• Mon 10/28:   Introduce Classification.  Dichotomous Key activity with fish, done in pairs.  Then, as a pair, you should make your own dichotomous key to organize 10 objects of your choice.  They can be animals, songs, books, characters, people, etc.
• Wed 10/30:  Last Beak quiz (Chapters 10-12).  Lab identifying organisms from 6 different invertebrate phyla.  Introduce cladograms.
• Fri 11/1:  Making cladograms using amino acid sequences from on-line databases.

Link to NY Times Article About Human Evolution

For some reason, I can't add links in the usual place right now, so I'm adding it here.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/18/science/fossil-skull-may-rewrite-humans-evolutionary-story.html?_r=0

And a news clip from the UK:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/archaeology/10388001/Skull-find-shines-new-light-on-human-evolution.html

The Week of 10/21-10/25

There is a SPARK lecture on Monday 10/21.  The speaker is an engineer from Intel.  You may get extra credit for going to one SPARK lecture per month, although remember that there is a limit on extra credit of 5% of the quarter grade.

• Mon 10/21:  Turn in Speciation Worksheet.  Questions on Hardy-Weinberg Packet?  Turn in today or Wednesday.  Overview of human evolution.  Radiometric dating.  Problems with the fossil record.  Humans as mammals and primates.  Cultural evolution versus biological evolution. Read 25.2.
• Wed 10/23:  Beak of the Finch quiz on Chapters 7-9.  Working with Hominid skull replicas.  Take careful measurements of different aspects of each of the skulls.  Read 34.7 and 34.8.
• Fri 10/25:  Phylogeny of the Hominid skulls.  Complete Skulls hand-out and turn in.  Changes in diet and changes in brain size of humans.  Last Beak quiz (Chapters 10-12) on Wed 10/30.

Heads up!  We will be going on a Field Trip on December 9th to a Legacy Emmanuel facility where we will view a preserved human cadaver to learn about human anatomy.

The Week of 10/14-10/18

• Tues 10/15:  Quiz on Chapters 4-6 of Beak of the Finch.  Natural selection and sexual selection.  Species and speciation.  Barriers between gene pools.  Read 24.1 and 24.2.
• Wed 10/16:  Gene pools and allele frequencies.  Hardy-Weinberg Equilibrium.  Read 23.1 and 23.2.
• Fri 10/18:  Hardy-Weinberg Activity.  The concept of half-life and radiometric dating.  Read 25.2.

Next week:  Beak of the Finch quiz on Chapters 7-9 on Wed 10/23.  Last quiz (Chapters 10-12) will be on Wed 10/30.   We will also be working with replicas of Hominid skulls as we explore human evolution!

Turnitin.com Info

For any of you who went to the SPARK lecture on Monday, let me remind you that we are turning in these assignments (summary and your response) through turnitin.com The class info for this year: Class ID #: 7134730 Password: darwin Please turn in SPARK lectures by the Friday of the week of the lecture, although I will give you until next Wednesday this time.

SPARK Lecture!

The first SPARK lecture of the school year will be Monday, October 7 at 3:30 in Room 169. The speaker is Dr. Kathleen Dalke, ObGyn. Please come and learn about her work and earn some extra credit for your science class!