Frequently Asked Questions: This page contains answers to common questions of students and parents.
- Do I need to restate the questions in my homework?
- Is there a lot of vocabulary in science? Why?
- Are we going to dissect things?
- How come Ms. Viksne is so crazy?
- Who is that Squid?
Do I need to restate the questions in my homework?
Yes, though not word for word. It is excellent practice to restate your
questions in your response to let your reader know what question you are
answering.
Is there a lot of vocabulary in science? Why?
My goodness, YES! There is vocabulary coming out of our ears as scientists.
We use very specific words to describe what we are talking about to avoid
confusion. Many of these words are scientific names, which means that they
are used all over the world to talk about the same organism. An example:
dog- english
perro- spanish
hund-german
but using the scientific name "Canis familiaris", every scientist in the
world will know what animal you are talking about.
Are we going to dissect things?
We don't do a lot of dissection this year. Most of your hands on dissection
will happen in high school, especially in advanced biology classes. This year
we will take a look at the internal structure of some organisms as a class.
How come Ms. Viksne is so crazy?
It's true, I get really excited about science, and I want you to as well.
This is all the life on the entire planet we're talking about! From the
smallest bacteria inside us, to the giant old-growth trees. why we have blue
eyes or brown hair like (or not like) our parents. How we grow, jump, get
sick, get well, and eat. We're talking about the who what where and why of our
makeup. That's pretty cool to me.
Who is that Squid?
That's Richard the Rainbow squid. He's a plastic squid used on many fishing
boats to catch large fish like tuna. They belong to the group called
cephalopod.
