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Week 8 - Genetic Materials

 

1. What did I learn this week? 
This week, we continued talking about DNA and how DNA is the blueprint for living things. We watched a few videos explaining DNA and how it's located within the nucleus of a cell. DNA looks like a twisted latter that has bases paired together. We talked about how Adenine is paired with thymine and cytosine is paired with guanine. It seems like a twisted ladder and we were actually able to participate in an activity where we created our own strands of DNA. We mix and matched the sides that bases were on and even twisted it to create something that actually looked just like DNA! We also took a look into creating our children and used a coin to determine the genes that the parents had. It was very similar to an activity that I did back in 7th grade where we did something similar. It puts a different perspective on genealogy and how hard it is for recessive traits to be passed down to offspring. 

2. What parts were clear and what were confusing?

I can understand why we are talking about DNA and genetics, but the activities and topics that we talked about seemed to be things that elementary-level students won't learn about until later in their schooling. I want to know more about what students are required to know about DNA through elementary school and how the learning of DNA could be intertwined with other topics or science units. 

3. How can you apply what you've learned to your future teaching? 

This week's lab brought out a bunch of activities and modes of learning that I can incorporate in my classrooms. I found the videos to be very helpful as they brought a lot of information back to me quickly. I also felt like they were on very friendly terms with young learners or individuals who had never learned about these topics before. I also liked that we kept going back to our fast plants and monitoring the growth of the plants. It was really cool to see the extra growth and sprouting of the plant after it was pollinated by the bees. 


Comments

  1. Grace KuhrOctober 17, 2024 at 11:02 AM

    Hi Maddy! This was such a great post and great pictures! I also agree that the videos provided a ton of information and can be great to use for younger kids' engagement as well. I would say that the fast-growing plants with pollination was something I am excited to see! It looks like there was such a major difference and the bees really played a part in that! Great post!

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