Scientific names of animals

[Skadi]

...How do you teach it?

 

Especially to students who haven't learned Latin or Greek?

 

I think it's useful to study the classification of animals, so I don't need convincing on that front. I certainly am not asking how to get kids to memorize every single animal, but I think they should recognize local wildlife like Ursus americanus and Meleagris gallopavo (the black bear and wild turkey). I'm pulling those examples from memory, so I sure hope I didn't mess them up. :D

 

I know the most obvious answer is drills, but I thought you guys might have some creative ideas. A game of some kind, perhaps? Feel free to share your success stories in teaching this material. I could use a nice story right now, particularly if it involves shocking a homeschooling skeptic who was certain your kids spend their days playing video games.

[kubiac]

I wonder if you could combine them with a study of Latin and Greek word roots--pick some animals your kids like and then break down the "meaning" of their binomial names? Ursus = bear = also useful for knowing the constellation Ursa Major, etc!

[Nestof3]

I didn't teach specific species, but I did teach phyla, orders, etc. as we studied them in a taxonomical way. We always broke down the names into their roots. It was actually rather fun. Echinoderms -- spiny skin. Chiroptera -- hand-wing. That sort of thing.

[Targhee]

I don't have any good strategy, except to make sure you are looking at pictures and studying those animals' natural history while doing it - that's how I memorized hundreds of scientific names: studying them, with specimens, in college.

 

Just a note, scientific names (nomenclature) can change. Accepted taxonomy is steadily being changed as well to reflect the cladistic (organization by shared evolutionary traits or actual DNA sequences) school of classification. Some of things I learned in college changed after only 5 years. So, the importance (scientifically) of memorizing Genus specific epithet names at this age would be more for the value of exercising the mind than for retrieving hard and fast rules/facts like Latin declinations and chemical compound names.