The purpose of the reflections paper is to get you to analyze what you thought about a topic before your experiences in this class and to contemplate how your observations, experiences, and work for the module fits into that understanding. This type of exercise is tricky in that it seems potentially “hokey” or a type of “busy-work.” But researchers in education have shown that oftentimes learners will only temporarily retain new information from a class, and as soon as they leave or are tested, their thinking reverts back to the original erroneous concepts. It is hard to change someone’s understanding of the world, but these types of reflective exercises can help.

The content of the reflections paper will not be graded right or wrong, it is more of an opinion piece where you will be graded based on your thoughtfulness about your own knowledge and how the experiences from each module fit into that system. You might be tempted to say that nothing changed in your understanding or view, but what we find is that inevitably even people trained in the sciences can gain something from pushing their understanding of even simple observations.
Format:
1-1.5 pages
Double spaced
12 font
1” margins
Questions to guide your paper:
Feel free to answer any number of the following questions to guide your writing.
From your observations and inquiry what changed in your view of (insert concept here from below)?
Why did it change?
What difference could that change make in other areas of your understanding?
What experience helped you make that change?
Was there anything you could have done differently in running your experiences that would have told you more?
Did you do any additional observations not called for in the lab?
Did these give you any additional insights?
If there were any errors in how you thought about the concept, what from your past led you to believe that?
Are there any implications for better understanding the concept?
Are there any implications for having errors in your understanding of the concept?
Remember that the concepts / objectives you are addressing for this module are:

That DNA codes for behavioral and structural traits of organisms and that it is found in almost all cells.
Explaining the basic process for how we chunk DNA into smaller pieces to analyze similarities.
Recalling that variation exists in most all populations.
Explaining that changes in a genetic code result from mutation and lead to variation in populations.
Recognizing that human family members that are more closely related have a more similar genetic code.
Recognizing that species that are more closely related have a more similar genetic code than those less related.
Listing three ways the environment can act as a selection pressure.
Giving some examples of how many offspring of different organisms reproduce and explain why all those offspring do not survive.
Giving an example of how powerful selection can be in shaping an organism.
Recalling that selection works only on the variation present in the population.
Interpreting natural history components like generation time and qualities of life history with an evolutionary lens.