If you are an expert in the nitrogen cycle, post your questions in the comment section below! If you were not a part of the nitrogen cycle...try to answer the questions.
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If you are an expert in the carbon cycle, post your questions in the comment section below! If you were not a part of the carbon cycle...try to answer the questions.
If you are an expert in the water cycle, post your questions in the comment section below! If you were not a part of the water cycle...try to answer the questions.
There has been a lot happening in Biology class recently. We just completed a unit on Classification - it was a short unit and perfect for the crazy week in April with all of the testing. We are now starting a unit on Ecology which is the study of how organisms interact with eachother and with the non-living parts of their enviroment. I will put a more detailed report up soon. For now, enjoy the cycles questions and comments that you will see in the next few posts!
The week before break we started our unit on evolution. We began by discussing the history of the Earth. We talked about how the Earth was formed and the four major eras. We also discussed the process of fossilization and the different ways to determine the age of fossils. We ended the week before break with a lab determining the evolutionary pattern of an imaginary species called Barbellus and using relative dating. We watched a really cool video about how flight has evolved and some of the experiments that scientists have conducted in order to better understand why species decided to move into the air.
Last week we began the week by discussing the process of radioactive decay. We used twizzlers to represent some that was decaying and the students were excited that we got to eat all of the pieces at the end. Then we started into a lab that used pennies to simulate the idea of K-40 decaying into Ar-40. The students used excel to make graphs and had to extrapolate information from the graph when they were finished. Then the students got to examine the amino acid structures of different species to determine how closely related all of the species were. This was the beginning of building up the evidence for evolution. In our class we will talk about five major pieces of evidence for evolution - fossil record, biochemical (amino acid similarities), structural, embryological and geographic distribution. To finish off the last three pieces of evidence, the students are in the process of working through a station labs. That brings us to this week: 4.10: On Tuesday, the students are going to finish up the last station and then will discuss all of the pieces of evidece as a group to make sure that we are all on the right page. We will also use some time to review all of the information that we have covered through out the unit as we will have a quiz tomorrow. If we have time we are going to start a mini simulation that shows how some moths in England changed. The homework will be to study for the quiz and the students will be given a review sheet for this. 4.11: We will start Wednesday with any last minute questions and then take the quiz. When we have finished the quiz, we are going to either start or finish the simulation of natural selection using the moth analogy. This activity will give the students a chance to have a hands on experience with natural selection before we really move into the lecture of natural selection which is the process by which evolution happens. Once we have wrapped up the activity, we are going to start a lecture about Darwin, his findings and his ideas. 4.12: Today will be the day we use to wrap up any of the lecture that we still have remaining and go through some really cool examples of evolution! We will also hopefully have some time to start talking about their lab tomorrow. 4.13 : Friday is a perfect day for this very interactive lab. We are going to simulate the process of natural selection of different colored pom poms in two different environments with three different types of predators. Many students will act as the predators and others will be in charge of resupplying the pompom popuations and hopefully by the end we will see how the overall population has changed and be able to explain why! It is a really fun lab with a lot of energy so be sure to ask your student how it went! 4.16: We will use this M Last week went according to the plan. Please review the last post if you have questions :)
This upcoming week is going to be interesting. I am going to try something new where the students are going to be able to work at their own pace. Every year when we cover punnett squares we find that some students get the idea of them right away and other students need more practice. This year I am going to try to tailor this part of the unit to each type of kid. The students have to learn 5 different types of genetic crosses. I am going to give them three different ways to learn about them - watching online videos of me teaching them and walking through a practice problem, going to an interactive website, or reading a how to handout. Then the students will also have the opportunity to prove their knowledge in two ways. They can complete a practice problem packet (approximately 10 crosses) that must be completed in class but they can help each other use notes and ask questions. Students can work on these at their own pace but they will be due by the end of the day on Friday. The other option is that they can complete a mini Quiz (I will schedule one for each day of the week) that must be completed on the scheduled day but only contains 2 crosses. Each day the students will have time in class to work on practice problem, the quiz or learning about the different types of crosses. I will be available for questions the entire time and can hopefully work more one on one with the students who struggle. If the students do not get all of the questions on the practice packet correct, they can make necessary corrections. If the students are not satisfied with their grade on the quiz they chose to take, they make complete the practice packet to make up additional points. Early next week, we will complete a cumulative review packet and then we will have a cumulative quiz over all of the information. Hopefully by working at their own pace, the students will be able to get a better handle on the information that we are working with. The video lectures are found on this website. Go to Bio 137, Unit, Genetics and then you should see the videos for each genetic cross. Below I have included the different interactive websites that can help the students learn about these types of crosses: Genetics Practice Problems: http://biology.clc.uc.edu/courses/bio105/geneprob.htm This website has practice problems for all of the types of crosses we will complete in class. You have to scroll down to find them and you will notice they discuss other crosses that we will not cover – do not let these other types of crosses confuse you. University of Arizona Monohybrid Cross Tutorial: http://www.biology.arizona.edu/mendelian_genetics/problem_sets/monohybrid_cross/01t.html This website focuses on explaining how to do a monohybrid cross and then has some practice multiple choice questions that follow the tutorial. Incomplete & Codominance: http://www.hobart.k12.in.us/jkousen/Biology/inccodom.htm This website discusses how to do an incomplete dominance cross and then has some practice problems where the answers are shown. Sex-Linked Genes: http://www.ksu.edu/biology/pob/genetics/xlinked.htm This website from Kansas State University provides practice problems for x-linked traits. As you complete the practice problems, you can click on hints and it will show how the punnett squares should be set up and explain why. Multiple Alleles: http://www.hobart.k12.in.us/jkousen/Biology/multalle.htm This website first details what a multiple allele problem is and what it is not. Then it has some sample questions with the answers and explanations listed. You just have to click on the link “answers” in order to see the explanations. Dihybrid Cross Virtual Activity: http://www.dnaftb.org/5/problem.html This website is a short tutorial on how to complete a dihybrid cross. It is interactive and explains the different steps to you as you go through the process. Hopefully you find these helpful I am sorry that I have been a little M.I.A. since break. The major thing that happened right after break was finals. We made it through finals and then started one of my favorite units of the year. This unit, called Biotechnology, discusses with the students some of the current scientific advances using DNA. We discussed everything from restriction enzymes & DNA fingerprinting to stem cells, cloning, genetically modified foods and designer babies. The unit wrapped up as we watched the movie Gattaca from the year 1997. This movie is a commentary on a future society where the majority of people have been genetically chosen by their parents. As crazy as that sounds, we currently have the technology to test and choose the best zygotes to be implanted. What would happen if this became common practice? Well, that is what the movie explores. I love watching this movie with the students because we get a chance to talk about discrimination, following dreams and the importance of hard work and determination. Ask your student about the movie. Overall a majority were giving it rave reviews and had great questions about why characters would do certain things. And if you are looking for an older movie to check out, I highly recommend it. Every year I watch the movie with students and each year I find myself drawn into the plot and character's emotions. Now where does that leave us.... Recap of 2/13-2/17 Monday 2/13: Today we had to finish the movie Gattaca as described above. Even though we only had about fifteen minutes left, it ends with a few twists that are unexpected and thought provoking. We then spent some time discussing the movie and clarifying any questions that the students had. Then we read an article from February of 2009 which discussed the clinics that are currently helping parents have designer babies. Here is a link to the article if you want to know how that is happening: Wall Street Journal Article Entitled: A Baby, Please. Blonde, Freckled, Hold the Colic. The homework for the evening was to write one last letter to their pen pal in class by answering seven prompts about how they felt about the movie and the article. Tuesday 2/14: Happy Valentine's Day! The students exchanged letters today and responded to their partner. I enjoyed watching them share their ideas and opinions with one another in a written form. After that we started to discuss out next unit - Genetics. I started by explaining meiosis - the process by which sex cells are made. Today we simply took notes. At home, the students started to read about meiosis and answer some questions. Wednesday 2/15: In order to fully grasp the idea of meiosis, the students completed an activity that compared mitosis to meiosis and then for homework completed the rest of the reading guide. I think it is important for the students to understand how mitosis and meiosis are similar and how they are different because the students have a pretty good grasp on mitosis. I believe that by comparing the two processes, the students gain a more complete understanding of meiosis. Thursday 2/16: We reviewed the process of meiosis by acting it out using some paper strips on the classroom floor. I promise that is a little more exciting than it sounds and provided a good visual for the students of what was happening by reinforcing what happened in the activity. Then we started to talk about karyotypes. These are pictures of a person's chromosomes. This picture can show how many chromosomes there are, any abnormalities and whether or not the person is a male or female. Then we talked about the karyotyping activity that the students would be working on tomorrow. Friday 2/17: I was not in class today because I was with the speech student who qualified for state (and got 5th! :) at the tournament). Hopefully the students were able to start the karyotyping activity where they are using one of fourteen sets of chromosomes to create a karyotype. We will then take a look at these karyotypes to determine if there are any abnormalities. The homework for the night was to complete section 11-1 in the reading guide. Monday 2/20: NO School :) Happy President's Day! Tuesday 2/21: Today we will hopefully finish the karyotypes that the students started on Friday. Depending on the time we may start to discuss the different types of genetic disorders that are present. We will also go over about 5 genetic vocabulary words. The homework tonight will be to finish the karyotyping activity. Wednesday 2/22: We will start with about five - ten more genetic terms and then finish any of the genetic disorders that we have not already discussed. We are spending so much time with the vocabulary in this unit because it is crucial that the students know what the words mean before they can fully understand the genetic problems that we will be starting on Friday. Thursday 2/23: Today we will finish all of the information about the vocabulary in preparation for a quiz tomorrow. Then we depending on how much time we have left we will either create drawings of the words or make flashcards to help ingrain these words into our minds. By transforming the definitions into something else hopefully the information will be stored more adequately for the students. Friday 2/24: The day will with a vocabulary quiz. On this quiz, I have really high expectations since this information is so important for the understanding of the rest of the unit. Therefore unless the students get an A on the quiz, they will have to retake the quiz in test make up to get credit. They can retake the quiz as many times as necessary but they will only have a week to complete this. After the quiz, we will start talking about Punnett Squares and genetic crosses. Depending on time we may take a prequiz that will not count as a grade but will help me determine where the students are in their knowledge of Punnett Squares. This year I am going to try something new to help tailor these Punnett Squares to each of the students' needs. More on this next week. Thanks for tuning in once more. I promise to keep the updates better updated and as always please let me know if you have any questions or would like different types of information in these updates! [email protected] I can't believe that we are one week away from winter break! I hope that everyone is excited about a chance to relax and celebrate the holidays! We have been continuing watching the demo of the day as a celebration of Fremd's 50th birthday. You can find links to all of the videos here: http://www.fhs.d211.org/events/fhs50/science_videos/ 12.5: Today we wrapped up our discussion of cellular respiration. We also took a look at what happens when the body runs low on oxygen and undergoes lactic acid fermentation - which causes the burning sensation in your muscles. We experimented with this by having a contest to see who could open and close a clothespin the most in the course of a minute...and then I added extra time on. All of the students were able to feel the burn and now then we discussed the biology of that was going on! 12.6: Today we took a little bit of time to review all of the material. Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration are complicated processes but I think processes and cycles are great tools to be able to understand. Even though the students may never utilize the photosynthesis or cellular respiration process in their adult lives, they will at some point in time talk about a process or a cycle and I think that some of the concepts or the step by step process that we discuss will help in the future. We started the cell energy question today by taking the first ten questions. 12.7: We went over any other question that the students had about cell energy and then finished the rest of the quest. With the small amount of time that we had remaining, we started to brainstorm what we already knew about DNA which is what we are going to be discussing in this current unit. 12.8: Today we talked about the cell energy test and went over how the students had done on the mitosis quest. Then we stated to discuss the structure of DNA. The homework tonight was to draw a picture of DNA. 12.9: We finished up our discussion of DNA and then filled out a power note sheet that helped us to transform the information that we had just learned. Then we jumped right into DNA replication. The homework tonight is going to be to finish the power notes on DNA replication and to double check that they have labelled all of the parts of the DNA molecule that they drew. Below is a youtube clip that goes through a lot of the information that we have covered in the last two days of class. 12.12: Today we are going to replicate the DNA strand that we drew. We will identify the helicase and the DNA polymerase. We will also make sure that we end up with identical strands of DNA. Then we will start our discussion of DNA vs RNA. RNA is a more simplistic type of genetic material and it is very important for the way in which our bodies get the message that is written in the DNA. We will talk about differences and similarities. Then the students will create a venn diagram with the information. THe homework tonight will be to work on some review pages.
12.13: We will go over the review pages that the students did for homework and then we will take a quiz that will cover DNA structure, DNA replication and DNA vs RNA. After the quiz we will begin a discussion on transcription which is the process used to make RNA from the template of DNA. As I explained to the students my main goal for this week is to get through a lot of information in this unit now before break so that they have their notes and can start taking a look at the finals review packet over break. I also want to get through bunch of the information before break so that we are able to spend some time after break reviewing the information before we take the unit test. 12:14: Today we will finish the information about transcription. We will then transform our notes into a picture. Once we have had a chance to do that, we are going to take the product of transcription (mRNA) and use that to make a protein in translation. We will start our notes on translation today and spend some time dealing with some new vocabulary. 12.15: We will finish up our notes on translation today and turn the notes into a picture. We will practice identifying parts of the process and practice using a codon chart. 12.16: On this the day before break, we will do some type of people activity where we simulate going from DNA all of the way to making a protein. With any additional time we will make sure that the students have the materials they need to start preparing for finals and perhaps watch a little bit of the LIFE series that aired on the Discovery Channel two years ago! http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/life/ I highly recommend checking this website out if you never saw the episodes when they aired! :) I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving break and were able to enjoy the time with loved ones. I am sorry for the lack of the update. 11.28.11: Today we had to take a few of the district assessments - three of them in fact. Our district has a set of 7-11 questions for many of the units that every student in the district needs to answer. We will use the data from these to compare teaching ideas based on results. Then we started into our new unit. This unit is all about getting energy for the cell. Therefore the first thing that we discussed was what is the form energy needs to be in in order to be easily usable for the cell. Energy needs to be in the form of ATP which stands for Adenosine Triphosphate. ATP stores a lot of energy in its last phosphate bond. Therefore when the cell uses the energy the ATP turns into a different molecule called ADP. A lot of what we talked about the rest of the week was how to take the ADP and turn it back into the ATP. 11.29.11: Today we started to look at photosynthesis by doing a webquest. The students visited four websites to get the purpose and idea of photosynthesis as well as some interesting facts about plants like why the leaves change color. The homework for the night was to finish the webquest. 11.30.11: Now that we had a basic understanding of photosynthesis it was important to talk about the details. We went over the two major steps of photosynthesis - the light dependent portion and the light independent portion (otherwise known as the Calvin Cycle). In the picture below you can see what enters into the light dependent portion of photosynthesis (Light and Water!) and then it makes NADPH, ATP and Oxygen. The NADPH moves to the Calving Cycle where it meets up with some Carbon Dioxide and goes through a bunch of formation changes. These changes create glucose which is sugar, or our primary source of energy. In class we talked through all of these steps. Then we started and the students completed a pictoral guide to photosynthesis and a graphic organizer of the steps for photosynthesis. 12.1.11: Happy December! The Fremd Science Department is celebrating the 50 years of Fremd through the month of December in a few fun ways. In class, we will be watching a video each day where a current science teacher highlights past scientists and teachers by honoring them with a favorite demonstration. We also have some of our oldest equipment on display outside of the cafeteria...think microscopes from 50 years ago and laser disks....and we will be highlighting some old technology by having old gaming systems out for students to play on Thursdays and Fridays. The video we watched today was done by Mrs. O'Dette, a chemistry teacher, who burns different ions to create different colored fire. You can watch the video at the following link: http://www.fhs.d211.org/events/fhs50/science_videos/odette.php After we watched the link, we went over the picture diagram of photosynthesis and the chart. By covering the information in the form of notes, having the students transform the information and then going over the information two more times, it is my hope that the information sticks! We also added a little bit of fun to the notes by watching a few songs about photosynthesis. You can check out the musical beauty below: We finished the day by starting to take notes on cellular respiration. We got through the first major step of cellular respiration which is called glycolysis and basically breaks glucose in half and makes 2 ATP molecules. There was no homework tonight. 12.2.11: Today's video was made by Ms Dworak, another chemistry teacher in the building. She completed a demo that creates a chemical reaction that looks like elephant toothpaste. Check it out here: http://www.fhs.d211.org/events/fhs50/science_videos/video.php?video=dworak Then we moved into cellular respiration. We talked about the details and the last two steps of the process which are known as the Kreb's cycle and the electron transport chain. The Kreb's cycle takes the glucose that was broken in half and rearranges the carbons in order to create and release carbon dioxide (that is where we get it to breath it out!) and some energy carrying molecules called NADH. Then the ETC (the electron transport chain) passes the energy along in such as way that ATP is made. Oxygen catches some of the leftover electrons and H+ ions and makes water. The homework over the weekend was to complete a picture diagram of cellular respiration and a graphic organizer of some of the big ideas. 12.5.11: Today we are going to go over the homework and make sure to review the information of the what is happening in cellular respiration. Then we are going to talk about what your body does it if runs out of oxygen in a specific area and what your body's plan b is. This is known as a anaerobic respiration and your body is still able to produce some energy - just not quite as much! We will do a few samples of this with jumping jacks and a opening and closing a clothespin. The homework for tonight will be to work a few review pages.
12.6.11: The first thing we will do today is review and make sure that we answer any and all questions. Then as long as we have enough time, we will take a quest (quiz/test) on photosynthesis and cellular respiration. There will be no homework unless the quest gets pushed back. 12.7.11: Today we are going to complete a test reflection from the mitosis unit and this cell energy unit. With finals a little bit more than a month away the students need to really think about how well they are doing on the units and where they need to focus for the final. After we have completed the test reflection we start to brainstorm what we know about our next unit, DNA. There will be reading out the book for homework tonight! 12.8.11: To start out our DNA unit, we will first discuss the structure. We will take notes over the structure and then talk about how DNA replicates. The homework for the night will be to draw a DNA molecule. 12.9.11: We will practice DNA replication with the picture we drew the night before. We will finish up any notes that we did not get to about DNA replication and make sure that everyone is clear about what happens during replication. There may be some reading out of the book for homework tonight. Important Dates to Keep in Mind: As the semester starts to come to a close, here are some dates that may be helpful: 12.13.11: Quiz on DNA/RNA and DNA Replication 12.17.11: Winter break begins 1.3.12: School resumes after winter break 1.6.12: Quiz on Transcription and Translation 1.12.12: Test over DNA and Protein Synthesis 1.16.12: No School - Martin Luther King Jr. Day 1.18.12: Biology Final for Period 1 1.19.12: Biology Final for Period 4 |
AuthorThe world around us is an amazing place that functions in beautiful harmony & I get to teach young minds all about it! Archives
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