Thursday December 17th - Light independent reactions / Photosynthesis wrap up.

Today we walked through the book work and I went into some details about the light INDEPENDENT reaction (also known as the dark reaction).

I gave you the book pages to look over since this can be a very tough subject to wrap your brains around!!  We started with these daily questions.


We reviewed the steps of the light dependent reaction and the splitting of water to release Oxygen gas and Hydrogen ions.

 Next up..... Producing SUGAR - Glucose.  Using the following book page we worked through the light independent reaction.

 Finally, I had you write the following wrap up slide in your notes.

Tuesday and Wednesday December 15th and 16th

Tuesday we continued with Photosynthesis and used our pop it bead models to work through the first stage of photosynthesis.

Here is a rundown of the days daily questions, notes and activities

Notes and pics of the activity:

 

This was an INCREDIBLY important step during photosynthesis for two reasons.
#1.  It released the oxygen gas that we need to breathe.
#2.  It helps to power the creation of ATP by adding a phosphate group on the ADP.  This is going to help fuel the NEXT stage of photosynthesis.

Energy from the Sun - Causes electrons to get excited - Water that has entered via the roots.... Gets Split apart......(see next picture)

The Hydrogen ions are then pumped through different photosystems but what WE really care about is that each oxygen binds with one OTHER oxygen to create O2 (molecular oxygen that we breath) which is then released into the atmosphere)

DURING this time - Two energy carriers are created.  Remember.... Energy is STORED in chemical bonds and RELEASED when bonds are broken.  We used out brightly colored beads to represent our energy molecules:

NADP and ADP are in the chloroplast already.

Another Phosphate is Added to ADP to create ATP.

A Hydrogen ion is added to NADP to create NADPH

 These two energy  molecules are what will fuel that second state of photosynthesis.

Wednesday you went through the book and filled out a directed reading about the light dependent reactions.

Photosynthesis and..... Sorry for being a slacker!!!

It's been a while since I have posted!! It's been a busy couple weeks and I haven't done a great job at keeping up on the blog!!

We've had a couple daily questions since the start of this unit

Most of our discussion so far has been based on the book work.  Make sure you stay updated on that!!

Today, after finishing our discussion on the book work, we did manage to get a couple more slides down in our notes:

 Tomorrow we will dive right into Photosynthesis!!

Cell Transport Daily Quiz and Practice Exam

Cell Transport Daily Question Quiz

2nd - Study Island Practice Test!!!

Tuesday November 17th - Egg lab day 2 - Out of the vinegar!!

Today was by far the messiest day of the best lab of the year.  We took our eggs out of the vinegar they had been bathing in for 24 hours.

The goals for today:  Weigh the egg, find a final volume of vinegar, take the shell off, place the egg with shell removed into corn syrup.  Here were some pics from today:

Not ALLLL of our eggs survived the day though?!?!?!

If you weren't here today - I recommend you watch the following video!!

Monday November 16th - Lipid Bilayer Wrap up and Egg Lab Day 1

First off I want to wish a big.....

Now.... back to biology

Daily Questions:

Next up - A couple more notes to give us enough content knowledge to at least BEGIN to understand what our awesome lab is about.

And THEN......   we met our egg!!

This week we will be putting together the concept of Structure / Function of the cell membrane.  Today you were given an egg.  You named your egg..... you fell in love with your egg.... you weighed your egg and then........... you put it in a bath of vinegar.  Here are some pics!

 

And then their was one named after me???

And they are now nice and cozy in their vinegar Bath!!

Thursday and Friday November 12th ans 13th - Cell Membrane and Transport Introduction

We had our first big exam on Tuesday and I was SUPER impressed with how you guys did!!  Wednesday I didn't get a chance to see the morning classes due to the musical assemblies.  Thursday you went through some intro book work and then worked on a couple daily questions.  Today we did another set of daily questions and started into notes.

Here were the daily questions from yesterday and today

Notes for today:

 I showed the simulated kidney cell filtering blood (which would make the liquid now simulated urine).  I also showed you how the cell membrane "holds in" the cytoplasm.

For some classes we watched the beginning of this YouTube clip from Mr. Anderson at bozeman biology.  He does a great job of making an analogy to the cell membrane.  I stopped it once he started talking about the different proteins.

Monday November 9th - Chemistry of Life Review

Chemistry of Life Review Session

Today we used a practice test I created on study island as a review  challenge.  You can access the entire document either by going directly to study island, 

( Username:  First.Last@LHS  Password:  Student ID)

going into your biology class and opening that assignment

 OR you can click on the image below and it will take you to a PDF of the exam with answers at the end.

Don't forget to look over the study guide that highlights main topics and terms from this chapter:

You can access this document here: