Week 7

Learned This Week

The first thing we did this week was check on our fast plants! We couldn't even get them out because they intertwined with our other classmate's plants. Then we went on and learned about genetics. We talked about dominant and recessive alleles and DNA structure and how all of those things play a role in the genetic makeup. We used dots and Twizzlers for our first activity to build a DNA structure. We used dots to represent the 4 main molecules in the nucleotides that make up the center of the DNA. Our A was yellow, T was green, and red was C. This was fun to build and an intriguing way to learn about DNA structure. After this, my partner and I had a baby! Haha, not really, but we declared what our allele types were and then used a coin to figure out our baby's specific features. We then had to do a reflection and reflect on the activity and what this activity would look like in real life.

Already Knew

Because I took so many sciences in high school I could relate to a lot of the information about DNA structure and alleles, and dominate and recessive genes. I had done an activity similar to this one in high school but we didn't even actually draw the baby so it was cool being able to this!

Clear and Confusing

These activities were all super clear and really helped refresh my knowledge of genetic structure. One thing that was confusing to me was how dominant and recessive roles actually play a role in real life. For example arent there some traits like brown eyes that are so dominant the child will get them no matter what basically?

Use in the Future

I think both of these activities are so fun and interactive for students. I love the engineering aspect of the building of the DNA structure I think it could be super fun for early elementary schoolers. I know a lot of schools have rules about foods so you could even use playdough! I also really like the building of the baby activity, I do think it could be a little more accurate because I don't think it gave the best example or explanation of the flaws in the simulation!