Friday, 11-10-06
Veteran's Day - No School!
Thursday, 11-09-06
Taxonomy?? Hierarchical kingdoms?? A genus?? These were words that no one in our class knew the meanings of before today. Now, however, everyone does. And all it took was half the class taking off their shoes! We classified the left shoes of most of the class into catagories until each shoe was in their own special group. In this way, the students began to understand the enormous task that faced the many people who classified all the living organisms on the earth. Oh, and by the way, be sure to ask your student how much of the words species are now extinct and how many are not even discovered yet. Here's a hint, it is well over one million organisms!
Wednesday, 11-08-06
Today was our first day of the evolution unit, and we spent it doing a fun lab where the students got to pretend to be Darwin's finches. Different sized adjustable wrenches served as our beaks, and pie pans full of different sized seeds and marshmallows served as the environment and our stomachs. The point was to try to have the students understand how a species can adapt to their environment to increase the likelihood of survival.
Tuesday, 11-07-06
Well, the Aliens have finally landed and I must say that the projects that I have had a chance to glance over this afternoon, are fantastic!! It is so obvious that a lot of effort was put into these projects. The drawings are detailed, the stories fun to read, and the level of creativity is very high. Thank you all for working as hard as you did. You make being a teacher a fun and rewarding job!
Monday, 11-06-06
Everything but the Choice Activity should be complete. Tonight is the last night to work on it and it is due tomorrow as the students walk through the door. Remind them that the order of the papers is important!
Friday, 11-03-06
The Punnett Square/Alien Crossing worksheet should be done and the rough draft of the baby alien drawing should be done. Choice activities should be chosen and checklists should be utilized and clicked into their binders.
Thursday, 11-02-06
The genotype and phenotype worksheet for the students should be completed, the drawing should of this alien should be done, and the crossing with another alien should be in process. If your student isn't bringing this project home, please be sure to ask them if they are confident and comfortable with their progress.
Wednesday, 11-01-06
The next four days will be devoted to finishing our big project for the trimester: Aliens! Each day I will post where each student should be in order to stay on track to turn it in and next Tuesday.
Tuesday, 10-31-06
Happy Halloween!!
Monday, 10-30-06
Today was taken up by a No Stress Quiz to help us review where we have been his term and help us determine what we have to revisit before we move on to the Evolution Unit. Once the quizzes are graded, I will report on the results.
Friday, 10-27-06
Today's Genetic Debate went so well! Thank you to all who helped students understand their roles better. Everyone participated fully and most got very passionate during the debate. It was fun to watch the students problem solve and try to collaborate despite very different objectives. The final answers from the different groups were diverse and creative. I encourage all of the parents to look at the summary I sent home with the students. Tonight, the students have to review the summary, study the Pros and Cons, and then write a one page essay stating their OWN PERSONAL beliefs on the issue. This is no longer is the role that they were given. This assignment is to make them think and reach a decision for themselves.
Thursday, 10-26-06
We are going to talk about cloning and inbreeding, seriously? Yes, but only in terms of plants and purebred animals. The concept of agricultural inbreeding has been in practice for over 5,000 years. Farmers choose the healthiest and biggest of their crops and cross them in order to bring out the best possible characteristics; even if the plants came from the same parents. As far as any other type of inbreeding, it is still totally taboo. Your students will be coming home today with a worksheet outlining a character that they will be playing tomorrow in class. Please help them review this sheet and make sure that they are confident in playing this role. For this exercise, the student is not to concentrate on their own personal beliefs regarding genetic modifications. We are dealing entirely with common groups that make up this controversial debate.
Wednesday, 10-25-06
Is it better to be male or female? We tackled this extremely subjective question today and found a very simple, irrefutable answer. As regards sex-linked gene disorders it is far better to be female! Color blindness has a far greater occurrence in males than females because they only have one X chromosome. Sex-linked genes attach to X chromosomes and are always recessive. Females' chromosome pair is XX and so is the luckier sex, because most of the time they have a sex-linked trait, their other X chromosome covers up the recessive trait and saves them from the disorder. The male students in our class were totally crushed to loose the debate!
Tuesday, 10-24-06
A video on genes featuring Bill Nye plus a very easy worksheet and candy for correct answers equals a day that no student complained about anything! There was a very interesting conversation about Donkeys, Mules, and Horses that you have to ask your student about. Be sure that you ask what is the number of chromosomes involved.
Monday, 10-23-06
X-men? Spiderman? Radio-active hamsters from a planet near Mars? Yes students, we can talk about those today. Mutations of a DNA strain can have all sorts of effects on the organism that it belongs to. We practiced drawing a mutated strain of DNA and talked about the two main reasons that a mutation might occur: radiation exposure and the wrong chemical bases matching up.
Friday, 10-20-06
No School!!!
Thursday, 10-19-06
Those kids are just so smart!! They are seemed to have known that the secret structure was DNA. Most had a good idea of what it was supposed to look like, but no one the specifics. We talked a little about how the order of the bases is extremely important (mistakes can lead to genetic disorders), but we will cover that in greater detail later on. Today was mainly for pronunciation. Over and over we repeated DI-OXY-RIBO-NUCLEIC-ACID. We also practiced the names of the specific bases: AD-DEN-INE, THY-A-MINE, GUA-NINE, and CYSTO-MINE. Go ahead and quiz them. They should know it well by now!
Wednesday, 10-18-06
Do you know what the secret structure of life is?? Well, if you do, be sure not to tell your student! It is a secret after all. I had to explain to them today that I had the secret structure of life already to show them, but... I lost it. Well, sort of. I did have the directions for making the structure and so I gave them to the students along with two red licorice, eight gum drops of four specific colors and twenty four tooth picks. Their job was to recreate the secret structure, and I would let them know if I felt they were getting close. Tomorrow, I will let them in on the 'secret' and show them the correct structure. That will lead into our next scientific discussion. But, SHHH, it is a secret.
Tuesday, 10-17-06
Aliens are coming!! But, these are not your garden variety aliens. These space inhabitants will be specially created and designed by our very own students. Today, we started our big project for the trimester. Each student has to choose the traits they want for their creation, assign the corresponding genotype, and list the phenotype. About two weeks from today, when we revisit this project, each student will have their alien matched up with someone else's alien, and they will then have to predict the offspring that would result from the combination of genotypes. There will be several stages to this project, but for today all they had to do was get the basic design down.
Monday, 10-16-06
We are on to our next BIG IDEA: chromosomes and meiosis. It was introduced today to build on the previous knowledge of genes and traits. There was a lot of information and, unfortunately, it was a day of notes and lecture. We will be starting a fun project tomorrow, so hopefully that will make up a little for all the writing of today.
Friday, 10-13-06
No School!! Statewide in-service day.
Thursday, 10-12-06
It may seem like we play with candy a lot, but the truth is...we do! But, in order to appease all the dentists out there, we do not eat the candy nearly as much as we play with it. Today, was a lab where we explored the difference between heterozygous and homozygous alleles. The parents were peanut M&M's that had little baby peanut M&M's. It was really very cute. The students had to produce ten offspring, and record each child's genotype and phenotype. Bonus M&M's were given for using definitions and vocabulary correctly and in context. I am happy to report that while we did not loose a single parent or child M&M, many bonus M&M's were distributed. Every student received aprox. two pieces of candy. (Alternate candies were available for those students who had peanut allergies and/or braces).
Wednesday, 10-11-06
We started our discussion of Punnett Squares and how they are used to predict the traits of offspring. Pea plants were our organism of choice as they are very simple and easy to plug into Punnett Squares. This continued off of our Gregor Mendel lessons from yesterday. The students were able to see how Mendel was able to do the probabilities and predictions in his head, but for most of us Punnett Squares are helpful and sometimes, as with human genetics, down right necessary! I showed a quick comparison of a 'human' Punnett Square to a 'pea plant' Punnett Square and the size difference surprised everyone. People are just a lot more complex.
Tuesday, 10-10-06
The topic of the day was glowing monkeys. In reality, it was genetics and all the components involved in the scientific study of heredity; but, as soon as it was pointed out that scientists were able to take a part of a glowing jelly fish and combine it with a monkey embryo, every other topic was related back to this particularly amazing fact. When we did review at the end of the day, some students were able to remember that Gregor Mendel was the founder of genetics, some others stated that genes are the things that determine traits, but the majority, by far, favored the monkey fact.
Monday, 10-09-06
Today was the first day of Life Science, not counting Friday's pre-test. We completed a traits survey of ourselves and one partner. There was a third column on the sheet for parents to be surveyed. The goal of the exercise was to prompt the students to think about the probability of getting certain traits from each parent.
The activity went extremely well, and all the students enjoyed themselves. I predict many of you reading this update have already been bombarded by questions or are about to be!!
