After reviewing the Unit 4 final exams, it was evident students need additional practice writing scientific procedures. Today, students were tasked with watching a short video of DNA extraction from a strawberry, writing a procedure for the experiment, and then working with their table partner to complete the experiment. By having to follow their own procedure, the concept of writing a procedure in enough detail for someone else to follow it was reinforced. Students will use the procedures they wrote today to help them write a related procedure tomorrow. Click here for today’s lesson and review the strawberry DNA extraction video below.
Category Archives: Central Dogma
Central Dogma: Molecular Bonds
After spending the first half of class reviewing the DNA base pairing worksheet from Tuesday, we moved ahead with a survey of molecular bonds. We focused on covalent and hydrogen bonds, with water molecules as our model molecules. Students used the molecular modeling kits to model the interactions of water molecules at different temperatures before moving on to modeling the interactions of DNA nucleotides. The lesson can be downloaded here.
Central Dogma: DNA base pairing
With all of the HHS science teaching staff participating in a Studio Day, students were tasked with completing a DNA base pairing worksheet with guidance from a substitute teacher. Students learned that in complementary DNA strands, A pairs with T and C pairs with G. When RNA is transcribed from DNA, the rules are the same with one exception: mRNA uses U instead of T, so in a DNA:RNA pairing, the A in DNA pairs with U in RNA. Students went on to learn about codons (adjacent sets of 3 RNA bases) and learned how codons code for amino acids. Students learned how to write the 3-letter and 1-letter amino acid abbreviations, and solved the amino acid structure from a DNA strand, as well as solved a DNA strand from a short amino acid sequence.
Central Dogma: Introduction to DNA
We began class with a new seating chart. Students organized themselves by birth month and were seated in pairs. Students were reminded how important it is to make new friends and engage with new people to learn new ideas and ways of approaching a scientific challenge.
After the seating chart, students were provided with a timeline for making up work from the last two weeks of Unit 4. All late work and revisions are due by this Friday. Students were also reminded to check in on the class website daily and to monitor the new Twitter feed for interesting science articles.
Next, we launched in to Unit 5: Central Dogma. Students were asked to write down everything they know about DNA and then shared their knowledge with their new table partner. Students were encouraged to use the agree/disagree structured partner talk strategy. Student pairs then shared one piece of information about DNA that they discussed by writing it on a class white board. An example of the information from one class is given below.
Finally, students received a few slides of instruction regarding Central Dogma vocabulary before we watched the first 16 minutes of Cosmos: Episode 2. The last slide of the lesson lists the questions students answered while watching the video.
Science with Swart 
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