This is the list of assessments in our present Unit, Unit 3. This Unit ends on Tuesday, Nov. 8th, with another Unit Test.
STUDENTS AND PARENTS: PLEASE NOTE!
All students have a major project (their Cell "Travel Brochure") due on Monday, October 31st. It is worth 100 points, and intended to help them raise their grades.
STUDENTS WHO ARE FAILING THE COURSE BY MORE THAN TEN PERCENT MAY BE ASSIGNED SATURDAY SCHOOL ON NOV. 12th
EXTINCTION Tuesday and Wednesday's classes featured excerpts from 'Extinction!', which is Episode 3 from NOVA's 'Evolution' series (2001). The video begins with paleontologist Peter Ward hunting for Permian fossils in South Africa's Karoo Desert, and relates ecological pyramids (which are like a 'house of cards') to mass extinctions, which are believed to be rare but important events in the history of life. It then follows the work of American Museum of Natural History researcher Michael Novacek in building the fossil record of small, shrew-like mammals from the Mesozoic, representative of the lineage that will survive the next mass extinction (the K/T event), which will claim the dinosaurs.
It concludes with an examination of the role of human activity in accelerating the rate of extinction, with important attention to conservationists like Alan Rabinowitz.
Students have been given a worksheet based upon this video as homework, which is due on Monday. I encourage students to watch the video in its entirety for themselves if there are points that they don't get in class. We simply do not have enough class time to review this, but I know many students will want to see the whole story again, either by going to Google Video or watching it here:
STUDENTS AND PARENTS: PLEASE NOTE!
