Biology Education and Teaching Methods

I have started a new module at the University of the Western Cape, that aspires to deal with the ever surfacing problem of teaching and relaying concepts to students. Many teaching methods have been devised over the past, but as its known some seem to work and some don't.

Step in "pedagogical" teaching methods, which tries

to relay these concepts that need to be learnt by using "Real World" examples, that the learner can identify and grasp. One of these given to us in class to read was Dr. Seuss's "The Lorax" which even though it was published in 1970's is pretty fitting in todays real world.

We were tasked to identify the main findings, characters and events unfolding in the for-mentioned book, and this is what i came up with!

Main Concept

The main crux of the story is environmental impact. The book nicely stated the two main kinds of people that are present among us i.e. the Nature Lover and the Money Lover.

It addresses some of the effects of environmental impact; such as the relocation of native inhabitants, deforestation, habitat loss etc. It shows how blind greed can escalate and get out of hand, as the over-harvesting of the truffula trees (key species) had a domino effect on all the other species both directly or indirectly dependent on these trees.

Characters in the Book

• A boy
• The Once-ler
• Lorax
• Various creatures that inhabit the forest

Events

• Boy asks/pays Once-ler to tell the mysterious story of the Lorax.
• Discovery of a resource (truffula trees) by the Once-ler (main story starts)
• Escalation in the exploitation of the resource. Lorax tries to convince the Once-ler to curb its usage of the resource.
• Over-exploitation leads to habitat and resource loss.
• No one can depend on the resource anymore.
• Once-ler tries to right his wrongs by placing the fate of the last truffula tree (a seed) in the hands of the Small boy. Hoping the the boy learned from his previous mistakes.

Well that was it in a nutshell, the book should be very engaging to younger audiences and like all Dr. Seuss books, it reads with a bit of rhythm and rhyme. If you cant get your hands on the book, go ahead and watch the video below. ^_^ Enjoy!