Heredity & Genetics

Welcome back after a wonderful Thanksgiving Break!

This week we have been continuing in our studies of genetics and heredity.

Wednesday-Multiple Allele work with blood type and punnett squares, a review sheet will be due for Thurs
Thursday-Karyotyping activity and a bit of notes-shouldn't be any homework
Friday-Genetic Disorders baby lab (Due Mon)
Monday-Share disorders project; short genetics disorders video -mitosis wkst due Tues
Tuesday-Cell division and mitosis (Heredity review due Wed)
Wednesday-Mitosis activity (Meiosis wkst due Thurs)
Thursday-Mendel and Meiosis/Mitosis and Meiosis comparison. Extra Credit is due. (Heredity review pt 2 due for Fri)
Friday Big Heredity/genetics quiz (Can use a 3 X 5 note card) also a binder check today. (Microorganisms worksheet due on Monday)

***We have instituted a new extra credit possibility for all students. Students need to find a current event article (either from the newspaper or online newsource-not a research paper or wikipedia or anything like that...it needs to be a current event). They need to summarize the article, share a personal reaction to the article, share how the article relates to the unit we are studying, and three thought provoking questions related to the article. The students need to attach the article to the sheet and present it the day before the quiz. We will allow this for every unit we have. This is an excellent opportunity for students to polish their grades after a few poor quiz scores.

Labs, labs, labs!

Hello and welcome to the Lab channel...we have quite a few labs this week!

We have just begun our DNA unit. We studied cells, now we will look inside of the nucleus at DNA, genes, and traits. This tends to be a fun unit!

Yesterday we started the unit with a few notes and a video about the human genome.
Today (Tues) we will be participating in a DNA Extraction lab. (Lab will be due on Wed)
Wed. We will complete a DNA Replication lab (Lab will be due on Thurs)
Thursday we will see a video on twins and work on heredity (Heredity wkst due Fri)
Friday and Monday we will continue heredity. There shoulsn't be homework if students use class time those days.
Tues we will be working on a "Baby" lab
Wednesday there will be work time continuing on heredity. There shouldn't be any homework over Thanksgiving Break!!!

Reminder that Wednesday is an early release day and that there is no school on Thursday and Friday. Enjoy all of that turkey!!!

On the Microscope

As mentioned in the previous post, Mr. Drangstveit will be taking paternity leave for all of second quarter. His long-term sub is Mr. Michael Johnson. mr. Johnson has subbed in our district extensively and is extremely knowledgeable and capable. We look forward to working together with him, and also look forward to Mr. Drangstveit's return.

This week we will be starting our microscope unit.
*Monday will be correcting a worksheet, working with total magnification, and participating in a microscope lab. (lab questions and animal cell worksheet will be due Tues)
*Tuesday-Animal cell notes and Cell lab (Cell factory wkst due Wed)
*Wednesday-Check the cell factory, intro cell project, intro incredible egg lab (project due Friday, Plant Cell wkst due Thurs)
*Thursday- Plant cell notes, plant cell microscope lab (lab questions and project due Friday)
*Friday-End of quarter. Animal Cells due, lab due, part two of egg lab, and concept map. (no homework)

This brings us to the end of the quarter.

Monday-Egg lab part 3, flow chart of movement of substances in and out of a cell
Tuesday-Review for quiz
Wednesday-Final part of the egg lab-finish questions of lab, take quiz.
Thursday-WKCE testing-No class
Friday-PTC-No School

Parent Teacher Conferences

Tonight the portal will open at 7:00 pm to sign up for parent-teacher conferences. For those of you that have Mr. Drangstveit for a teacher, he will be on paternity leave beginning on Monday and will be doing conferences in the Spring. Mrs. Blackmore will be available for conferences. Since this is a team-taught class we are trying to combine schedules and ask that if it is at all possible to choose a conference in General Biology on Thursday evening rather than Friday during the day. Mrs. Veroeven will be in meetings most of Friday and would like to participate in General Biology conferences. Hope to see you Thursday night!

Copy/Paste

We are in the process of grading the Endangered Species projects that we finished last week and they are research papers which are taking a bit of time to grade. We did have a group of papers that were plagiarized. We wanted to give you a heads up that if you notice a tage next to your child's grade that says "cheated"-that means that they plagiarized their paper. We are giving those students the ability to redo their paper for partial credit. We also attached the sources to the students' papers so there is no question about the copy and paste method used!

Wise Use of Resources Continued

We completed day two of our pollution lab (water) yesterday and had time to complete our lab write ups which will be due today. We will be watching a pollution video (with Matt Damon-can it get better than that? hehe) in class today. Wednesday we will be in the computer lab computing our ecological footprints and completing a review for our quiz which will be on Thursday. After the quiz students have a worksheet that will be due on Friday that they can work on. Our next unit will be Geologic time/History of Life.

That is this week in a nutshell. have a great week and enjoy the beautiful Autumn colors!!!

Wise Use of Resources Unit!

Hello and welcome to the end of our Ecology Unit and Beginning of our Wise Use of Resources Unit.

• Today we spent the day reviewing and preparing for our quiz tomorrow.
• Tomorrow-We will have a quiz and binder check tomorrow and students will receive a a Wise use of resources worksheet that will be due for Friday.
• Friday we will check homework and watch parts of a National Geographic video on endangered species
• Monday we will be introducing an endangered speicies project and using much of the class period to work on it in the computer lab.
• Tuesday work day on project (and they will have a worksheet due for Wednesday)
• Wednesday-Present projects and check worksheet
• Thursday-Introduce "How to do a Lab Write up" and begin with prelab (This is the beginning of their first really big lab write up)
• Friday-Soil Lab

This should be good for now. We have a lot of activity and excitment coming up!!!

Change of plans!

Students have been working on their individual and group projects this week and although it was previously reported that the projects would be due on Wednesday, we decided to give them one more work day as they seem to really need it. So both their indivudual project as well as their group project will be due on Thursday!!!

Wednesday already???

Oops! I can't believe how fast the week is going..!

This week we began our Ecology unit. We spent yesterday outside studying the ecology of Pheasant Branch Creek...what a beautiful day! Today we worked on climate and how that determines the type of life that lives in a particular area. Students have a homework assignment to color and code a world map of biomes.
Upcoming:
Thurs-Biome Video (no homework)
Fri- Finish Biome video-Begin Biome projects in computer lab (both are Due Sept. 24th)
Mon-Computer lab work time (will have homework sheet of vocab terms due for Wed)
Tues CRT-EPAS testing-no class
Wed-Share posters (group) and adaptation project (Individual) Check homework sheet.

There are two projects that the students will be working on. I will try to include a blog entry with their specifics soon (maybe this afternoon). One will be a group project while the other will be an individual project which is an extension of the group project...more to come on that!

have a great week!
The Gen Bio Team

Our First Full Week...and a quiz!

Welcome back. We are happily studying the scientific method. Today we wrapped up a two day raft lab activity...be sure to ask you child about this. We had some amazing engineering!
Tuesday we will review the steps to the Scientific Method including application of each step to the lab we just completed. We will also focus on the data collection and interpretation step(s) and work through graphing. (Students may have a little bit of homework settting up graphs on Tuesday night.
Wednesday we will continue with graphing and review for the quiz.
Thursday-Our first quiz and binder grade There will be homework (wkst 1.2)
Friday-Begin our Ecology Unit (Will have homework-Levels worksheet)

Happy week 2!

Week 1

Hello and welcome to general biology. This week we will be spending a good deal of time orienting your child to General Biology. The three of us will work collaboratively so that your child will have assignments, tests, etc all due at the same time so there isn't confusion from one class to another.

Students will receive their materials list on Tuesday and all required materials will be due Thursday. If there is a problem with this please don't hesitate to make contact and we can assist in getting materials for your child if needed. If you have paper bags at home plese send them to school with your child on Wednesday as we will be participating in a classroom activity with them and we are always in need of a few extra.

Tuesday-Routine
Wednesday-Lab activity
Thursday-In-class textbook activity
Friday- Scientific Method Unit introduction/lab activity

There will be no homework this week other than to obtain and bring required materials

Happy first week!!!
The General Biology Team

General Biology 2008-2009 classroom materials list

Required materials:
One 1-2" 3-ring binder for General Biology only
One pack of loose leaf paper (wide or narrow rule)
Writing utensils (pencils needed for lab write-ups)
One pack of colored pencils

Recommended Materials:
Ruler
Graph Paper
3 X 5" Note cards
Scissor

All materials are due Thursday, September 4th!!! Please let your child's teacher know if there are any problems in obtaining these materials.