My philosophy going into this ACP all along has been that I would limit the scope of the material that I would test on without sacrificing the quality of the questions asked. This translates into distilling every lesson down to one question, that when answered fully, will adequately prepare the student for the ACP. I've given office hours for my students, one hour every day at a convenient time for them. The questions I gave, I did not give answers for, because theoretically, they already have them - and it's a good motivator to talk to me during my office hours.
But they still don't see what is so basic to me, that I can't quite figure out how to teach it. One of the questions I ask for the review is, "Why is the superior side of the Dicot leaf more green than the inferior side?", which is not an easy question, requiring some research. The answer is only found by breaking down - by analyzing - the question asked. The first item that needs to be discovered here is, "What causes the color green in the plant?" which is the chlorophyll, contained in chloroplasts. This is something I harped on first trimester, but has been forgotten and is the main stumbling block to answering this question.
Once it is realized where the green color comes from, then you can ask "Where are the chloroplasts in a Dicot leaf?", which leads you to the kicker: the layer closest to the superior side.
I don't expect my students to all get it right or have all the info memorized; but I do expect them to try and put the information they HAVE together in some coherent, constructive manner. And that's the challenge. I'm trying to give a crash course in how to think, using Biology in Portuguese, and all the students are learning are biological words in Portuguese.
Peace
John
