Invertebrate Taxonomy Fill-In: Fill & Download for Free

Don’t take Dr. Ritchie’s opinion too seriously. It was brutal, alright, but very biased, bitter, and needlessly discouraging.I became interested in invertebrate zoology as a teenager, got my PhD in it, and had a very satisfying 40-year career in biology and made a good living at it before retiring as distinguished professor of biology, emeritus. I would do it all again. I didn’t work some some fly-by-night dinky college either, but at a university of 6500 students with the third-highest admission standards in the Georgia university system, and thus with high caliber students in my classes. I can scarcely imagine a better life.I met my wife through biology, raised two children, one of whom became a biologist and now works in water resource ecology, owned four homes, built my largest for cash (no mortgage) and donated it to the university rather than go through the hassle of selling it, and donated over $2 million to the university in addition. Not too shabby for someone who grew up in a family on welfare where no one had ever been to college before. All due to my early love of biology and my work ethic.One might say things are different than when I went into biology, and that’s true. However, right up to my retirement in 2017, I served on and sometimes chaired search committees to hire new biology faculty. We hired experts in reptiles, mammalian fossils, algae, beetles, birds, neuroscience, human anatomy and physiology, and plant taxonomy. None of these were expected to have the grinding level of coursework that Dr. Ritchie describes. We always wished there were more applicants. We never had more than 25 to 30 people apply for any of these, and only 5 to 8 of those were even worth looking at (e.g., for reason of having much background in the field of biology we were filling). More quality applicants would have been welcome.It really depends on what kind of biologist you want to become. If you want to become an ecologist, a molecular biologist, a cell physiologist, or a neurophysiologist, or work in industry or government, you’ll need more physical and mathematical sciences. If you’d enjoy teaching biology in a liberal arts university and doing research pursuing your own interests as I did (in behavioral ecology of invertebrates), they’re still looking for more qualified persons; I see many people getting college teaching jobs with only a master’s degree. These are lower level positions without possibility of tenure, but I know four people right now who are extremely happy in that work. There’s a wide variety of opportunities in the field. There will be malcontents who give only a discouraging outlook on it, but you’ll get that in any profession.

I’m in the state officially known as the Buckle on the Bible Belt, so I may have some perspective here. . .I teach biology at the University of Central Arkansas, and we’ve had an Evolution course for biology majors for about the past 25 years. I’ve taught it frequently. It’s taught nearly every semester and usually fills up. Evolution is also covered in the introductory course and non-majors survey course, and it’s implicit in most of the courses we teach—whether Cell Biology (the prof is a specialist on mitochondria and really hammers ’em on serial endosymbiosis) or Comparative Vertebrate Anatomy (a.k.a. “boot camp with a dead shark and a dead cat”) or our organismal diversity courses (Plant Taxonomy, Vertebrate Zoology, Invertebrate Zoology, etc.) As far as I know, this is typical for all our state universities.There was a half-hearted legislative attempt to ban teaching “false information” almost 20 years ago—which would have specifically barred me from teaching about Piltdown Man (aack! oh no! not Piltdown Man!). But the bill died in committee (ftp://www.arkleg.state.ar.us/Bills/2001/Htm/HB2548.pdf) and since then, the state has not tried to intervene in the teaching of evolution as far as I know. Students in my non-majors’ survey course will occasionally register displeasure when I mention the dreaded E-word, but usually nothing worse than glares in my direction. And this has become noticeably less common in the past 20 years. I get a lot fewer questions about religion and science than I used to. I think this parallels the overall decline of religiosity in the younger generations. I don’t even get Chick tracts slipped under my office door any more.(For the record: I don’t care what that stupid movie said, I’ve never told any student to deny God. See Ben Waggoner's answer to Do atheist professors ever make students renounce their belief in God, or is that only in the movies?)As far as I know, my experience is pretty typical for the state universities. My town has a Methodist-affiliated college, Hendrix College, but they’re just fine with evolution. There are universities and colleges in Arkansas operated by more conservative churches. But one of my best friends in grad school went to Harding University in beautiful metropolitan Searcy, Arkansas, owned and operated by the Church of Christ (the “Churchachrist” in local dialect), which is famously hard-assed when it comes to enforcing morality. My friend won the university’s annual hymn-writing contest with a text based on Habbakuk—which tells you all you need to know about what kind of place it is. And he never had any difficulty with evolution—his major professor was a top-flight plant evolutionary biologist and systematist. He averred that the faculty had always presented it openly and fairly and allowed the students to make up their own minds.We do have Central Baptist College in town, and they’re affiliated with the Missionary Baptist Association of America, which is pretty hard-line. I don’t have any contacts in their science department any more, but about 20 years ago, they had a “creation science” course on the books. I’m not sure how often it was taught. Their library used to get the Creation Research Society Quarterly, which I used to go read when I felt like a downright psychedelic, funhouse-mirror experience. They emphatically didn’t teach evolution—and in fact I knew an instructor who was fired for saying the words “Big Bang” in class. But at the time, they didn’t have much of a science department in the first place; they were much bigger on Homiletics, Apologetics, New Testament Greek, and all that ministerial stuff. I couldn’t tell you what the current situation is. Somehow I doubt that the place will ever be a hotbed of evolutionary biology.So as far as I know: in the Bible Belt, state universities and private non-sectarian universities teach evolution throughout the biology curriculum. Church-affiliated schools may vary depending on the strictness of the church, but mainline denominations generally don’t have a problem with evolution, and even conservative denominations don’t always forbid it.

Good Lessons: Start at the EndYou can design your lesson backward: Begin with the intended result.TSWBAT (the student will be able to) create a compound sentence and a complex sentence.This is a good summative assessment because creation is a higher order thinking skill than mere identification, according to bloom’s taxonomy.Now, list about two or three skills (also known as objectives) students will need to master in order to be successful with the assessment:Skill 1) TSWBAT Create an independent clause.Skill 2) TSWBAT Create a dependent clause.In order for students to be able to master these two skills, they will probably need to be provided with some background information consisting, at least in part, of a few key definitions: clause, subject, verb, coordinating conjunction, and subordinating conjunction. The best way to present background information and key terminology is a mini-lesson (shouldn’t take much more than 15 to 20 minutes, before attention spans dry up). I prefer PPT presentations with guided notes that I grade on the spot as I walk around the room. But let’s back up a bit.Having worked backwards, we have created a general outline for the day’s lesson.According to the famous Mastery Teaching Model (or MTM), effective lessons consist of “I do” (modeling), “We do” (Guided Practice), and “You do” (Independent Practice).More specifically however, a good lesson has 5 parts: 1) Do Now/ Hook, 2) Direct Instruction (the mini-lesson), 3) Modeling, 4) Guided Practice, and 5) Independent Practice (the aforementioned assessment we started off with).Do Now/ HookEvery lesson should begin with an engaging hook that captures the students interests and hopefully sparks an emotional connection to the content. Short films work well for this. Sometimes content-related pictures projected as bell-ringers can be quietly journaled about as a Do-Now. But remember that best practice suggests that anything you have students do in class be reciprocated by your provision of some form of closure for the activity, whether that means they turn something into the basket, they discuss their work as a group or class, or they receive a simple star sticker in their journal for the day’s entry.Mini-LessonThe Mini-Lesson should engage with visuals and interesting background information, but must contain terminology or concepts needed for mastery of those skills that are to be assessed. Guided notes graded right in class will ensure that students are following along.ModelingHere is where you demonstrate the desired skill by performing it yourself. Talking yourself through it by asking yourself obvious questions can aid understanding and make students more comfortable. During this process it is ok to seem vulnerable and unsure (even if this is just an act—teaching is partly acting after all).Here’s your script:In our mini-lesson we learned the difference between a compound sentence and a complex sentence. Using our notes, Let’s determine whether or not the following sentence is compound or complex:“The house sits high on the hill, but it’s garage lies far below in the valley”Well I know the word “house” in this sentence is the subject because it does the action of the verb, which I’m pretty sure is “sits”. So, the first part says “the house sits high on the hill”. It has a subject and a verb… in fact, it sounds pretty good the way it is… I think it’s an independent clause, but let me check the definition of independent clause in my notes here… It says here that independent clauses have a subject and a verb and thae they can stand on their own, yep its an independent clause. Now the second part has a subject, “garage,’ and a verb, ‘lies,’ so the whole second part “but it’s garage lies far below in the valley” might be an independent clause too, and if I check my notes, I can see here that a compound sentence is “two independent clauses joined by a coordinating conjunction,” so what is connecting these two independent clauses…. Hmmm…let me see.. it’s the word “but”. I know it’s a conjunction, but is it coordinating or subordinating.., wait let me go back to my acronym FANBOYS, yes, (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so)… yeah there it is, but. It’s coordinating! This sentence is a compound sentence.”Guided PracticeNow that you’ve modeled distinguishing between compound and complex sentences, your students should be ready to practice that skill with a little help from their friends. During Guided Practice, students are paired up, put in small groups, chorale respond as a class, or have a class discussion predicated upon practicing the skill that was just modeled by the teacher. In our case, students would be working together to identify compound and complex sentences. I usually provide some form of worksheet, at the very least, to record the answers provided for this activity, so that I may provide remediation for certain individuals or groups that may not have mastered a concept, or so that I may provide whole class remediation (in the form of direct instruction) of certain concepts that for whatever reason, where not grasped by anyone. One of the most valuable mantras of teaching consists of three little words: “Monitor and adjust”. The idea of Group work is based on a sort of “rising tide lifts all boats” pedagogical theory developed by Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky’s theory touts a hypothetical “zone of proximal development,” where learners close to mastery of a skill are paired with learners who’ve already mastered it, with the intention that some mysterious social phenomena associated with the group dynamic will allow the less advanced student to make the final connections needed to grasp the full picture simply by interacting with a student whose already got it down. The practice seems to work very well, but it can make it difficult if not impossible to pinpoint an individual deficiency, so just keep that in mind.Independent PracticeThis is the final step of the learning process, where the student can prove mastery of a skill all on his own. This is also your assessment. You have previously tasked your students with identifying compound and complex sentences in groups but now they are charged with creating them all on their own. Their ability to do this will prove their mastery of the two skills we listed earlier as our objectives. This particular assessment is known as an authentic assessment, because it charges students with applying learned concepts to the creation of something applicable to, useful for, and valid within the context of the real world. It also provides the opportunity for something called “transfer,” which is often depicted as a sort of holy grail of education. Transfer allows skills learned in one discipline or domain to carry over into others. Transfer is idealized in education, not simply because it allows one skill to be used in various ways and for various purposes, but significantly because it has allowed great minds to solve otherwise-impenetrable mysteries since the dawn of recorded history. Archimedes worked long and hard to develop a formula for accurately measuring the volume of any irregularly-shaped object. After exhausting all calculations and at a loss, he retired for the day in disappointment. Trying to put it out of his mind, he decided to relax in a hot bath. As he sank into the tub, he watched the water placidly rising about him. He shot up out of the tub, immediately recognizing that the risen water was displaced by his submerged body, and that such a rise in water must correspond directly to whatever is pushed down below its surface. He knew at once that this process provided an easily verifiable measure of the total volume of any irregular object. He ran naked through the streets shouting “Eureka!” The chemist who discovered the molecular structure for the chemical compound benzene labored for months to describe in physical space how this compound’s molecules might be arranged. One night, exhausted from work, he fell into a deep sleep. In a dream that came upon him like fate, the chemist saw an archetypal vision, the universal symbol for eternity, a serpent devouring its own tail. A paradoxical image of simultaneous creation and destruction, the serpent forever grows and forever consumes itself, taking the form of a never-ending ring. Known to the Greeks as the uroborus, the image burned itself into the chemist’s brain. He awoke and quickly sketched the physical structure for benzene as six carbon atoms configured in a ring.For the last task of the lesson, the independent practice, students can use their notes or prior work, but they must work alone. This kind of activity is often called an exit-ticket. Be sure that students turn this activity in to you so that you may take the time required to give it thoughtful and considerate feedback. Feedback should be timely and productive (i.e. students should be able to use the corrections you are to improve future attempts). I spot-check or quick grade fill in the blank, matching, or multiple choice type work, but student writing is something I like to devote a little time to. The effort and time I put into grading is usually on par with the effort and time the student puts into the completion of the particular assignment. Many educators advocate ending class with some form of closure, a kind of restatement or recap of the general “theme” of the lesson. This is a good idea but often hard to work into a lesson that from the very beginning is building in crescendo to a highly focused period of quiet time called independent practice. It’s probably best to at least rehash main ideas after the guided practice and prior to the final assessment of independent practice.A Word About UnitsA unit is comprised of several lessons. It lasts anywhere from 1–4 weeks on average. A unit should cover several interrelated skills. Some typical units might include: Parts of Speech, The Civil War, Ballads, Public Speaking, Modernism, Evaluating Sources, The Baroque Period, The Noble Gases, Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple, The Writing Process, Serfdom, Conducting Research, The Pythagorean Theorum, The Puritans, Native American Literature, Invertebrates, or Ancient Mesopotamia.Backward design is applicable to units too. The desired end result would be for all students to pass some type of end of unit assessment. There would be objectives, or displayed skills tied to this assessment of course, and many lessons would contribute to providing neccesary information and ways to practice the skills that will ultimately be assessed.Proponents of backward design also suggest reinforcing your content with “big ideas”. These are one or two word phrases that are 1) easily understandable and 2) readily transferable to any discipline. These big ideas are to act as the thematic foundation of your unit. I once did a unit about Romantic Literature. My big idea for the unit was “balance”. Every day, in every lesson, I came back to this idea of “balance”. I read Romantic poems about balance. I made students balance on one leg. I created worksheets that allowed students to balance a scale by answering questions correctly. This was because the ultimate concept of the unit that I wanted them to be able to describe, defend, and speculate deeply about was that the Romantic period was extremely emotional as a balance to the unfeeling rationalism of the enlightenment. The big idea helped illustrate the defining concept of the period while being commonplace enough to transfer its meaning to any context or to any other discipline, from the sophisticated titrations of chemistry that use balanced equations to turn base to acid to water and back again, to the practical matter of balancing a checkbook in a personal finance course, to the mundane, but essential balancing of a set of car tires in the auto tech shop.