With many students out of class because of three different field trips happening today, we had to reschedule our quiz for tomorrow. For a starter activity today, students received a worksheet instructing them to write a paragraph comparing mitosis and meiosis, using 10 different key vocabulary words in their paragraph. Students who finished early had time to complete missing assignments.
Notes from the white board after 5th period are shown below:
We reviewed problems 6 and 7 from Friday’s Punnett Square worksheet at the start of class. Students then had the remainder of class to complete the worksheet, complete the meosis reading assignment from last Thursday, and to get both assignments checked off in Illuminate. When finished, students had the opportunity to model meiosis using clay as in the previous unit.
We closed out the unit today with a review of dihybrid crosses. Students received their scored unit quizzes from last Friday, and the common theme across all of my classes was that students needed more practice with dihybrid crosses. After the review today, students received a copy of the unit exam. They must turn it in on Monday, along with the scored copy of the quiz. Students who demonstrate improvement on the dihybrid cross question on the exam will have that question’s score substituted for the score the received on a similar question on the quiz. Good luck!
The quiz today covered one and two-trait Punnett Squares, challenged students to compare mitosis and meiosis using ten key unit vocabulary terms, and included a questioned designed to provoke student thinking around a topic incorporating genetics, evolution, and student opinion.
For students interested in learning more about how genetics affect appearance, the links below are excellent resources:
The genetics of eye color: What Color Eyes will your Children Have?
The genetics of height: Number of genes linked to height revealed by study
The genetics of skin color: Unpacking Human Evolution to Find the Genetic Determinants of Human Skin Pigmentation
Students learned to construct and analyze the products of a dihybrid cross (two-trait Punnett Square) today. We worked through the entry task slide using the white boards and document camera in class to ensure student understanding of the process. Slides 3-7 of the attached PowerPoint deck were not presented in class, but are included as an example for students needing to review. Students then had the remainder of the class period to complete the dihybrid cross worksheet.
Class began with a “pop quiz” – an entry task designed to serve multiple purposes. First, students were tasked with thinking about whether they thought there was a relationship between males, females, dominant alleles, and recessive alleles. After some private think/write time, students followed the structured partner talk protocol, sharing their understanding and then engaging in a respectful debate if needed. After a class share-out that included a review of key unit vocabulary terms, students learned that although dominant and recessive alleles are not linked to a particular parent, there are examples of sex-linked conditions like color-blindness. We finished with an activity in which students used the purple books to model the process of meiosis. Many students used Play-Doh and a few were able to create stop-motion videos of the process using the cell phones. Slides for the lesson can be viewed here.
We kicked off 4th quarter with a review of content covered during the first week of the Meiosis Unit. After a one-week interruption by Spring Break, students watched the Crash Course meiosis video (below), focusing on crossing over and homologous recombination. We wrapped up with a vocabulary review. Slides for today can be downloaded here.
Today marked the end of third quarter. With the short class period, students had the option of working quietly on any missing assignments or watching a video. As the recent proud recipients of a grant from the Southwest King School Retirees Association, students will soon have access to two Arduino microprocessors, some accessory components, and two books for learning to program the Arduino in the classroom. To introduce students to the Arduino and to connect the technology back (at least tangentially!) with our current unit of study (it’s a stretch, but we have been talking a lot about plant genetics), students watched a video about how Arduino technology can be integrated with aquaponics to power a highly productive garden. The video, as well as more about the Arduino, can be found on the Disruptive Innovations: Arduino page on this website.
Have a wonderful Spring Break!
In our last full day before Spring Break, students revisited their Punnett Square work from yesterday. Focusing on question #2 from the worksheet, students were challenged to write a paragraph summarizing the question and its answer using the following 7 vocabulary words: phenotype, genotype, dominant, recessive, allele, homozygous, and heterozygous. Students then shared their paragraph with their table partner as explained in the slides for today. Finally, students read the second half of chapter 4 in the Inside the Cell book.
Crossing Over Play-Doh Model:
Science with Swart 
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