Back to AP bio- science classroom visit

 I had the chance to observe Dover’s AP biology class taught my Ms. Miller. At dover Ms. Miller also teaching honors biology and anatomy as well as being a coach for the track and field team.  The day that I observed they were covering exponential growth in populations and carrying capacity within those populations. 

 

Run-down of the class: 

 

First Ms. Miller presented about exponential growth and taught them what it was. She did this by asking them a bunch of questions after providing a base knowledge of the content. During the lesson this is how she kept students engaged. She asked questions like what would start to decrease if the population is increasing? What would start to increase if population is also increasing?  looking at history why has the population exponentially grown? I think that this tactic helped keep them involved and relate it to their personal lives and the world around them. She also used a variety of graphs and data to show how exponential growth has affected populations and how it eventually comes down or flat lines at its carrying capacity. 

 

Second Ms. Miller gave them a self-guided lab where they got to recreate exponential growth using animal crackers. This kept the students involved because they had a hands-on aspect to the lesson. She also related it back to how the goal of this lab was to be able to graph the data and preform the population calculations and find carrying capacity to be used on their AP exam. During the lab the student started with a base population of animals and rolled dice to see how much the animals would double. The second dice was used to determine where the animal would be put on a grid, if two animals were in the same grid space they died off. At the end they were able to graph the data and preform the calculations. 

Overall, this was a great class to observe the students are super smart and motivated to work. They all also have a close relationship because there are only 9 students in the class. Ms. Miller seems like she would be an awesome AP bio teacher to have that all the students can learn a lot from.