Week 7

 What did you learn this week?

    This week we learned about genetics. Some things we learned and reviewed were:

- DNA is the blueprint for all living things.

- There are 20 amino acids and they are the building blocks of life and they make up proteins. 

- RNA is single stranded and DNA is double stranded. 

- DNA is located in the nucleus, Proteins are in the cytoplasm, RNA is located in both the nucleus and cytoplasm because it moves back and forth. 

We also checked on our fast plants which are growing so chaotically it almost stresses me out. I am thinking they have grown as tall as they will because none of them are really standing up straight anymore and look as if they are dying. Below is an updated picture of the fast plants. 

Are you able to relate what you learned to what you already knew?

    I am able to relate what I learned to what I already knew because I knew about DNA and RNA already, but had forgotten a lot of information about them over the years. The last time I took a chemistry class was in 2015, about eight years ago, so I have forgotten a lot about chemistry. 

    I was refreshed about the base pairs and the letters used there; C, G, T, A (U for RNA). I also was reminded of the three parts of nucleotides which are; base pairs, sugar backbone, and phosphate. 

How can you apply what you’ve learned to your teaching in the future?

    Something I will be able to apply to my future teaching is the activity about genotypes and phenotypes that we did in our lab today. When we were drawing out our ‘child” we all were laughing and having a good time and we were also learning at the same time. Sometimes when teaching and learning harder topics it can be hard to make sure that your students are also having fun, but this lesson was very intriguing and fun and I will definitely be applying it to my future classroom. 

    The first image below is our daughter whose name is “Boy”. The second image below is Boy’s genotypes and phenotypes that make her, her.