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.




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.....

Heredity Intro

Yesterday I was out of the building and you guys finished up your meiosis write ups and then did some intro book work about heredity.  Today we went through the following Daily Questions that went along with the book work:

Video of the conversation:

After these Daily Questions I gave you the last 10-15 minutes of class to finish up your book work

DAILY QUESTION QUIZ TOMORROW!!!!!!!!  This will be for daily questions from THIS WEEK AND LAST WEEK!!!!  (Remember, we did not have a DQQ last Friday)

Tuesday March 3rd - meiosis and nondisjunction wrap up

We started with the following daily questions to set the tone for our meiosis activity write up.  Here is a clip of our discussion

You then began working on your Meiosis Activity Write ups.  You will have tomorrow to work on this as well while I am out.

Meiosis Wrap Up and Nondisjunction introduction

It's like groundhog's day with these two-hour delays........  I'm not sure we are going to know what a normal 5 day week is like.........

Again though..... we keep trucking along!!!  Today we wrapped up meiosis with the following daily questions and discussion.

Going a step further.  If one of those gametes with an extra chromosome are fertilized by a gamete with the NORMAL haploid number - the zygote would have trisomy.  If you refer to the bottom drawings of the next pic it will help visualize that a bit.

A nice overall look at Meiosis:  I HIGHLY recommend you watch this if you have missed ANY part of our discussions or activities.

I'm not even going to give you announcements for the rest of week or ahead of that ..... at SOME point we will have a DQQ, at SOME point we will have an exam, at SOME point spring will come :)

meiosis 2

Well........ ANOTHER 2 hour delay...... But The Show MUST GO ON 

We still managed to do daily questions AND work through Meiosis 2 which i find to be a pretty successful feat for sure!!

Then we worked through Meiosis 2 with the models:

And Continued with our Drawings:

February 26th - Meiosis 1

Today we started with the following Daily Questions:

Video of the discussion:

Then we went through Meiosis I using a variety of methods. I DISCUSSED sections first with the following slides:

A little Intro from my boy Hank: ***NOTE IN THIS VIDEO ABOUT CROSSING OVER!!!****

We Worked through them with your chromosome Models: Sorry for the poor quality pics :( 

PROPHASE 1

(The chromosomes have condensed, and paired up with their homolog)

Crossing over may occur (legs of homologous chromosomes may "swap" DNA)

 Metaphase 1 PAIRS of homologous Chromosomes line up at the equator

 Anaphase 1 - Homologous Chromosomes separate from each other

 Telophase 1 / Cytokinesis 

Then you DREW out what happened:

A wrap up of the events before and During Meiosis I

Hank Wrapping it up:

Homologous Chromosome Drawings

Alright - we FINALLY had a full day of school today.......

Yesterday we had our DQ²

 As with the last one - It was located on Edline.

Today we finally got into the drawings that I had hoped to do for you to have a better understanding of homologous chromosomes.  This will lead to a MUCH more productive conversation about meiosis.

We first jotted down the following Daily Questions:

Next was a review of what homologous chromosomes are and what alleles are:

Next up was some homologous chromosome drawing.  Here were the drawings and then a video of the discussion.  I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU WATCH THE VIDEO IF YOU MISSED THIS!!!!

We were able to move into a little more detail on Meiosis - but I will save all those notes for tomorrow!!!

REALLY WINTER??!?!?!?!

No.... I DON'T want to build a snowman... what I DO want is for us to be back on some sort of "normal" schedule......  But alas... after a FOUR day weekend and THEN a TWO HOUR DELAY - We were back in each others presence....

With the shortened periods we spend the bulk of the class on daily questions.  Here is the image followed by a video of my discussion.

VIDEO:

I also used the following SciShow about Chimera's and... well some other REALLY weird things we will learn in this unit.

ANOTHER two hour delay tomorrow.............
BUT - We WILL have our daily question quiz and get through WHATEVER else we can!!

Asexual vs Sexual reproduction - getting a better understanding of homologous chromosomes

Some more review on Haploid Vs Diploid Cells during the Daily Questions - As well as a little better look at what zygotes are and the concept of how homologous chromosomes get separated during Meiosis.

Not here today???  Here is a clip of our discussion about Homologous Chromosomes:

We finished up Advantages / Disadvantages to Asexual Reproduction:

An advantage of asexual reproduction to GREMLINS is shown in this clip...... ;)

It may be an advantage to THEM.... but a disadvantage to US!!!!

Then on to Sexual Reproduction

Then worked with the chromosome models again - Seeing the relationship between Homologous Chromosomes:

Using the models we noted what a diploid cell was.  Diploid means there are TWO of every chromosome (one from mom and one from dad).  Pairs of chromosomes are known as homologous chromosomes.

Introduction to Meiosis and Heredity

Thursday and Friday we took our cell cycle, DNA replication, cell division etc.  Exam and took a look at how we did.  Overall I was VERY pleased with how you guys did!!  I mentioned before the second half of the year is WAY cooler than the first.  (although we couldn't fully appreciate this unless we had learned those foundations!!)

Friday I showed you some quick intro videos.... and of course a song.....

We had a two hour delay today because it was STINKING cold........

 ......so......we didn't have a TON of time to dive into our new topic so the majority of the class period was spent on the daily questions.

Watch the following video to hear / see the discussion we had for these daily questions.  It will give you a MUCH better idea of what haploid vs diploid cells are and Homologous Chromosomes.

We did get a chance to start into some of the notes for this chapter.