Tuesday, March 31, 2015

Gene Expression assignment

Wednesday April 1st

Today you took your Daily Question Quiz on Edline.  Hopefully this is how you are feeling now!! ;)
Success Kid - Daily Question Quiz.... ROCKED IT

NOW, don't even for a SECOND think that i would give you a MOMENT of down time...

HANG TIGHT GUYS!!!!!

You will be performing a couple  different tasks online and documenting your findings on a handout I provided.

FIRST though..... I would like you to watch this short YouTube clip and answer the questions I gave you. ( You may want to pause it in order to get through all the questions)

NEXT - You are going to take a stab at transcribing and translating your DNA / RNA through two different animations.

FIRST go to http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/molecules/transcribe/
Follow all the instructions in the animation and document your work as you go.

SECOND go to http://www.biotechnologyonline.gov.au/popups/int_transcription.html and http://www.biotechnologyonline.gov.au/popups/int_translation.html

You will go through transcription first
Then through translation
FINALLY - you are to click through this final animation
http://www.biotechnologyonline.gov.au/popups/int_prosynth.html

Continue through translation

Today we had two regular "keystone" daily questions and then a work sheet the went through transcription.  We used the ENTIRE class period to go over these AND to get to know our translation models.

The "keystone prep" daily Questions:
Along with a little music that went along with that second question.....

THEN.........  to the translation diagram:

And the actual "translating" part of this process:

Tomorrow DAILY QUESTION QUIZ!!!!

Monday, March 30, 2015

Transcription Wrap Up - Translation Intro

Friday March 27th we had our weekly assessment time.  These were the things you turned in
*  Intro bookwork (for completion only)
*  Transcription worksheet (for correction)
*  Transcription NOTES Quiz (this was in place of a DQQ)

Today's announcements
DAILY QUESTION QUIZ on WEDNESDAY (this week AND last week's DQs)
Thursday - catch up day
 
Today we started into translation with the following Daily Questions:

We did a quick review of the slides from transcription:

On to Translation:





Thursday, March 26, 2015

Transcription notes/activities/video

The past TWO day's we have been going through transcription using a variety of methods.  Here were the daily questions for both Wednesday and Thursday
Wednesday the 25TH (NOT the 24th sorry!!!)

We used our K'nex Models from before to build both a complementary DNA Strand along with the corresponding mRNA strand


First you made your Double Stranded DNA molecule using the Template DNA I gave today
Using the DNA base pairing rules you Matched Ts with As and Gs with Cs

NEXT you started to TRANSCRIBE the message found in the DNA.  This means you started to build your RNA molecule.  Some differences:  FIRST, the sugar is RIBOSE instead of Deoxyribose.  With our models that was shown by using the orange backbone pieces.  SECOND - Thymine on the DNA side is still paired with Adenine on the RNA side, but ADENINE now is paired with URACIL (NOT thymine).  With our models we see that as a PURPLE nucleotide.
Finally, the DNA is zipped RIGHT back up (just like we would close our instruction manual) and the RNA is released. 
After doing that ourselves I had you watch the first 2 minutes of the following video which shows you a MUCH more detailed look at what goes on at the sub-cellular level.

Some of the notes we used to go through this section (all of this was done in your book work so you didn't have to WRITE any of these notes down - you just updated the intro book work assignment)








Tuesday, March 24, 2015

Transcription/Translation intro Continued

From here on out we will have two types of Daily questions.  We will have a couple questions about our current topic and a couple questions on topics from module A.  I want to refresh your memory on the first part of the year and not BOMBARD you will that review all the week before the Keystone exam.

Here were today's daily questions:

Video of our Discussion: (We talked a LOT about why the other answers were WRONG)

We then watched the following Crash Course.   As I have mentioned before, this can be overwhelming!!  Since you have at least READ through this topic, I had hoped you would at least recognize SOME of the things he spoke about.


Finally,  I talked about the end of the nine weeks bonus assignment (which can be found here:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B36SoMWuuJZEa3hzTHlSd3EwUWc&authuser=0 )

These are active reading about ecology.  Ecology is a part of the keystone exam that you actually learned in detail during your environmental science class (8th grade).  I know that for some of you that seems like a century ago, so we will be spending a week or so reviewing those.  As a way to prepare you for that, you can receive 2 bonus points for each active reading you complete (there are 9 and if you chose to do them all I will give you 2 more bonus points just for being awesome - so that would add up to 20 bonus points.............

NEXT - I put the Daily Question Quiz exemption form on Edline.  



Monday, March 23, 2015

protein synthesis introduction

Today we did things a little backwards.  I had you WRITE the daily questions first,take your best guess at them and THEN got into the activity for the day.  As a little "trailer" for this unit we watched the following video

THEN I had you reading through this section of the book to get some introductory knowledge down.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xrtw3hkWIqZs4syTXyQlq_H571BXU0fihQP1n54SHfw/edit?usp=sharing

For the book pages remember you can go to:
Book link:  http://my.hrw.com
Username: bbiology20
Password: biology


THEN we went through today's Daily Questions:

Friday, March 20, 2015

Review - Test - Fights with technology

Well first off.....
Happy Spring
Although.......
A wrap up of the rest of this week.
*Tuesday we had our formal review for the exam - *Wednesday we took the multiple choice part of the exam. 
*Thursday you completed the constructed response portion of the exam and started your CDT......
Unless you were in first or second period when I was in a full our battle with technology.......
*Friday most of the glitches were worked out and you finished your CDTs.  You seemed to score RIGHT where I had expected.  Most of you were in the Green or Blue range for the second two areas (which are the most recent sections we have learned).  A lot of you went DOWN in the first area, again, which I expected since it has been a while since we learned it and we have learned a LOT this year!!!  That is why a LARGE portion of the two weeks before keystones will be dedicated to module A.

More about that when all the scores are in.

Have a great weekend!!!

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Punnett Squares and Introduction to Complex forms of inheritance

Today's Daily Question gave you a silly way to look at how to make a punnett square and what a punnett square can be used for.
 
A good look at how to make punnett squares:

We then moved into some brief notes about more complex forms of inheritance.  We will get into detail on these over the next two days. 

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

Taking a closer look at heredity with an inventory of our traits

It's been a beautiful two days so far!!!  A MUCH needed breath of fresh air after a couple rough weeks!!!

Yesterday and Today we worked through an inventory of our traits - here were the daily questions from the past two days:





Here were some of the traits we looked at during our activity.


The BEST was seeing if you can taste the chemical phenylthiocarbamide (PTC)

Here is a little more science behind that.


how taste works

Please understand, though, that the traits we looked at the past two days are MUCH MORE complex than a simple "Dominant/Recessive" pattern.  The following link takes you to an interesting site that explains these common myths of human genetics.
http://udel.edu/~mcdonald/mythintro.html

After finishing up that "Inventory of our traits" activity  - I continued on discussing a little about genetic disorders and one of my FAVORITE videos of the year was shown.....