New Celebration

This last semester has been full of being outdoors and experiencing nature celebrations. Looking through all the photos in my phone to choose a specific event really had me looking back at this semester as a whole and remembering everything that I actually did and experienced.

My family lives in Houghton, MI and for a month they are housing a 16 year old from Germany, like an exchange student. He has seen a lot of different things in Houghton and this last weekend I invited my brothers to come to Marquette and visit me for the day so he could see another town in the Upper Peninsula. I woke up Saturday morning and there was 6 new inches of snow on the ground, and when they showed up to town they were not dressed for the new weather. Either way I was determined we go on an outdoor adventure, because that is just what we do in Marquette.

I took them out to Presque Isle and we walked out to Black Rocks. We actually went out to the rocks and we kept falling in deep holes in the snow; keep in mind my brothers had tennis shoes and vans on. Despite what we were up against we had a great time looking out to the lake and breathing all the fresh air. This was one of my favorite times out on Black Rocks.

Mitosis & Meiosis

To learn about Mitosis and Meiosis in animal and plant cells we looked at the different stages of  onion root and worm cells under the microscope. The different stages are Interphase, Metaphase, Anaphase, and Telephase. The difference between animal and plant cells is animal cells also undergo Cytokinesis. We had to find all the stages under the microscope and draw it out on paper, which was also very helpful to fully understand the differences.
There are several similarities and differences between mitosis and meiosis. The main difference between is their type of reproduction. Meiosis is sexual whereas mitosis is asexual. Mitosis occurs in all organisms and meiosis only occurs in humans, animals, plants, and fungi.
I thought this activity was very helpful and was the best way to learn about the different stages of mitosis. 

DNA discovery, structure and replication

To represent DNA, Dr. Lowe gave us Twizzlers, Jelly beans, and toothpicks to make a strip of DNA. My partner and I put 2 different colors of jelly beans on a toothpick and 2 different colors on another toothpick. We did this with 7 toothpicks, but keeping the 2 colors with each other, but changing the order(picture below).
We then took the toothpicks and broke them in half, now my partner and I having half of the DNA strip. Using the same color pattern we replicated the DNA, finishing it off by adding another Twizzler to the end of the toothpicks. 
This was a great way to represent DNA as a hands on project. For me, it is hard to visualize tiny things like cells or DNA, but using things that I can see and touch is very helpful. I would definitely use this in my classroom one day.

Chain Factory

As a class we were given a description of a factory and we were each given different roles to play inside the factory. It was confusing at first, but after we broke apart each of the roles it made much more sense. Once we were all "acting" out our different roles it was pretty chaotic at first, but we all started getting in a flow and everything was moving smoothly and pretty quickly. I was the custodian and my job was to pick up all of the energy units each of the people would use. I was constantly walking around finding energy units which represents how much energy the cell actually uses. I represented the lysosomes in the cell.

This activity really helped me understand the concepts of how the cell works. It made it much easier for me to picture the activity in the cell as appose to just talking about what the cell does. I also think this would be very helpful for young students that are learning about the cell because it puts it in different context which is helpful sometimes.

It also amazed me that we learned about all the different parts of the cell in under 2 hours because I remember learning about the cell in 7th grade and we spend weeks learning about it. I would definitely use this analogy in my classroom.

Chernoff Faces

I learned a lot from doing the Chernoff faces. It was really interesting to see how quickly everyone's faces changed and no one had the exact same looking face. This is the same as classification of living things because everything starts off in the same general group, but after breaking the groups down into specific categories everything becomes separated. After we drew our faces we grouped up into different categories based on our preferences. I liked seeing people that are similar to me and that liked the same things as me. We grouped up based on where we lived, or majors, and our favorite type of food.
I enjoyed doing this activity and think it would be great to use in a classroom for kids to understand classification. I liked how the categories were based on things we liked because I think that would keep kids interested and having fun.

Dangers of DHMO

Before I watched the video on the Dangers of DHMO I already knew that they were talking about water. In the 9th grade my physical science teacher gave us the exact same information and had everyone in the class convinced and signing a petition to have it banned. He didn't tell us until the end of the hour that it was actually water that we were wanting to ban. After I found out that DHMO was water I read through all the facts again and it all made sense, but it didn't make sense to ban it anymore because it's water.

 That day I learned not to fall for something until I have heard all of the facts. I should have been asking questions and I should have asked him to tell me a few good things about DHMO, and hopefully with that information I could have figured out if it is something that I really wanted to ban or not. 

This helped me in the future because I began asking more questions and figuring out what I really believed and wanted to believe. It also helped me in tough situations where people want me to sign a petition for them and I don't really want to right away. Instead of signing it, I ask questions and tell them I will look deeper into during my own time, and after I look into it then I would make the decision.

Inquiry Wheel

After learning about the inquiry wheel I liked it a lot more than the typical scientific method approach. I really liked how everything goes back to asking questions. Being told to do a project that you can only have one question to limits the project. It limits the students from furthering research and really finding out information. To reiterate questions being important, the picture shows questions being the main portion of the diagram.
I remember doing the typical scientific method in grade school for a science fair project. Half way through the projects I would notice something I didn't think would happen, but I would have to stick to my original plan because that was what the question was and what the results had to show.
I had never heard of the inquiry wheel until this class and I plan on using it in my classroom because I think it will give my students the best results and get them the most interested in what they are studying and learning about.