Year 11 Microbes Internal

Today I had my Y11 for an internal intensive (rather than a mid-year exam). We've been learning about bacteria and fungi for two weeks now using a mixture of Education Perfect, literacy activities designed by our literacy specialist Marc Milford and class activities. 

Today was a bread and yoghurt-making practical that they will have to discuss for their 4-credit write-up next week. 

Hopoate and Hala sieving their flour as they begin to make bread.

Each group started off the lesson by making a slightly different type of bread using a variation of a basic recipe. After all the steps were followed and the dough was left to rise (aka the yeast were left alone with the flour to conduct anaerobic respiration) we baked the bread for 25 minutes.

Then we made observations of the appearance of the bread, and also did a taste-test. 

Chelsea with the different variations of bread (her wholemeal bread is second from the right).

After we had made bread using yeast we interacted with a different microorganism - bacteria! 

Students first heated milk to destroy any pathogenic (harmful) bacteria, and then cooled it to the optimum temperature for our helpful species. Then the bacteria were added and left to do their work for the next five hours. We'll eat the yoghurt tomorrow!

Makaydyn making yoghurt - the live bacteria cultures are in the yellow packet Desiree is holding on the left of the picture, and are about to added now the milk has dropped to the optimum 40 degrees celsius. 

The students were great and the lesson went really well. I would definitely do this with a class again - perhaps earlier in the topic, so when we discuss respiration in greater depth they would have something tangible to hook the abstract concept on.

We couldn't have run this lesson without Ms Heka helping us out in her kitchen! Hopefully we left it as we found it Ms Heka! Thanks for hosting us :) 

Pedigree Charts Intro with Y12

Today Year 12 learned about pedigree charts. To start with they each picked a cat and colored in the nose either pink or brown, and gave their cats a name. As they finished I put them up in a pedigree chart, to show the relationships between each of their cats. 

I thought this might be a good way to introduce pedigree charts. We did a 'mini whiteboard quiz' where I asked who the parents of Ziggy were, who the two grandparents of Nala and Mufasa were, etc.

On the side of the board I also drew the squares and circles used in pedigree charts to represent male and females. Then I colored in the symbols depending on whether the cats had a pink or red nose. 

The questions in the whiteboard quiz became harder; which trait is most likely recessive? (Brown, because Churry and King have pink noses but their offspring Jerry has a brown nose. Meanwhile, Lilo and Junior both have brown noses, and only produced brown-nosed Ziggy and Simba). What are the genotypes of Brown and Cat? Etc. 

Once we started to try and work out genotypes based off relationships and offspring/parents, students became a little more confused. We moved on to some activities on my genetics website and I moved around, trying to help. 

I thought I would try to show my thought process while working out genotypes based on phenotypes in pedigree charts:

IF pink noses were recessive, Churry and King would both be homozygous recessive; nn. How, then, could they have produced brown-nosed Jerry, when neither of them has a dominant allele to pass on? They couldn't! 

Therefore, brown noses must be recessive. 

That means Jerry must be nn, because Jerry has a brown nose. 

Where did Jerry get his two recessive nn alleles from? Both of his parents must carry at least one recessive allele. They must be ?n,

What is their other allele?

Jerry's parents Churry and King both have pink noses, the dominant colour. They must have at least one dominant allele, to have pink noses. That means their other allele must be N. 

Therefore both Churry and King are heterozygous; Nn. Both parents are showing the dominant phenotype, but must also carry a recessive allele each to produce children with both pink and brown noses:

To produce both phenotypes, both parents must be heterozygous. If they were both NN, then 100% of their children would also have the dominant trait of pink noses. 

As you can see, Churry and King produced offspring with both pink and brown noses. The offspring with pink noses (Bestfriend Stealer and Tom) could be NN or Nn - we will have to see what their  genotypes are based on their own offspring! 

Hopefully this blog post helped people learn how pedigree charts can reveal genotypes, as well as relationships between individuals. Maybe you can even work out Bestfriend Stealer's genotype, based off her offspring Nala and Mufasa's phenotypes! 

Runnin' (From Lava)

Year 11 is starting their second assessment on Surface Features of New Zealand. 

To gain the credits in this assessment students need to produce a report, create a Prezi or presentation, or make a tourism video or brochure about Auckland's volcanoes. 

 They need to explain processes happening UNDER the ground that cause Auckland volcanoes, as well as what occurs ON TOP of the ground during an eruption, and some process that happen over many years AFTER to form the familiar peaks or lakes around Auckland. 

Why is there a Beyonce song at the start of this post?

I love learning through music! 

One of my students was listening to Beyonce instead of me the other day (she IS fabulous, but can she teach about volcanoes? hmmm...) 

Turns out that she can, if we use her song but change some lyrics. That same student and her friend will hopefully record this song for their class in coming days, to help them learn about the hotspot under Auckland:

[Girls]

These four layers deep have changed the Earth’s surface

The Earth’s surface,

It’s changing still.

The heat it starts deep first from the outer core,

Heats mantle up,

Mantle just above,

Starts heating up.

Where else can it go?

Where else can it go?

Convecting up,

To the crust.

Crust then starts to melt,

Magma building up,

Hot magma

Hot magma

Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,

Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot

No hotspots at the plate boundaries,

Just in the middle at Auckland,

It’s a hotspot, hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,

Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,

A hundred kilometers below,

The melted rock is building up.

If the pressure builds we lose it all

[Boys]

If I feel the earth shake I won’t be standing still,

Be gapping it,

To Hamilton,

As the magma pushes up through cracks,

And fissures,

To the surface,

Eruption time!

Where else can I go?

When Auckland loses control,

Lava on you,

Chasing you.

Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,

Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot

Eruption size and lava type,

Make different volcano shapes.

[Girls]

It’s a hotspot, hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,

Hotspot, hotspot, hotspot,

Caldera, strato-volcano,

Cinder cone and shield shape too.

[Boys]

When the lava cools,

It leaves behind,

[Girls]

It’s a ro-cky volcano,

slopes and sides,

[Boys]

Then it changes shape more

over time

[Girls]

When humans use it or,

e-ro-sion.

Year 11 Practical End-Of-Year Challenges..

The end of the year for seniors is closing fast, and my Year 11 class have finished all of their internals for the year. As their class doesn't sit any science exams at the end of the year, the last few days have been spent either sending students off to other classes to finish off any overdue work there, or... something else. 

"What should that 'something else' be?" I asked myself at the start of the last week. For some of my Year 11's, this week may be their last taste of science at school, ever. Others have chosen one of Tamaki's three science options in Year 12 and will experience another year or two. 

I decided that the best use of our last few days together would be to do practical science; designing a solution to a problem, testing it, making modifications, testing it again, and then of course a bit of healthy competition between the end-products.

Challenge 1

Our first challenge was to find the best launching strategy for the best shuttle, based off the activity from NASA and the Design Squad.

Full pdf of their activities can be found here:  https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/308966main_On_the_Moon.pdf 

Litani found the best way to use the balloon as a launcher was not to have it full, but instead to have only the smallest amount of air in the balloon and clap it shut, to push it out all at one time. He also found that the bendy end of the straw needed to be fully inside the balloon.  

One of the students, Mac, spent most of that lesson designing an arm-propelled shuttle (i.e. a shuttle he could throw rather than launch with the balloon) He built a brilliant one out of straws that looked a little bit like a Star Wars fighter plane with the x at the back. He weighted the middle of it with some rubber tubing, and it flew beautifully. 

Challenge 2

Mac's design gave rise to the second challenge; designing a plane to fly the furthest when thrown outside. I thought Mac would re-build his Star Fighter but instead he made a new creation!

Mac's new creation

Litani and Jordan opted for streamlined paper planes reinforced with bamboo skewers and weighted in the nose. They were also held together with sellotape. 

Litani and Jordan's planes

Jordan and Litani had a close battle, after Alex threw his 'UFO' entry...

As for Mac's entry... 

Duui was skeptical about the prowess of Mac's plane, and went and stood about halfway down the field and said there's no way it'd be able to get past him! You can see where he's standing in the video, and whether Mac's plane went past him or not...

Challenge 3

Our final challenge was to protect an egg dropped from a height. Students were given packs of equipment to use, including a plastic bottle, bubble wrap, 2 plastic plates, 4 straws, 3 pipe cleaners, a small newspaper, tinfoil, styrofoam beads, 2 balloons, scissors and unlimited sellotape. Each pack was missing one of these items and students got to choose which pack they wanted. 

Mac created a landing pod space shuttle sort of contraption. You have to open at least 3 hatches to see the 'egg-stronaut' in the pod! 

Litani created a parachute sort of contraption, with balloons attached later. 

Jordan created a sort of indestructible tank and quite cleverly; a landing pad! 

Zeph created a brilliant parachute contraption using the tinfoil between balloons and a cushioned suspension landing base that the egg sits on. His fell so gracefully when it was dropped!

Our first test was off the Marae deck at my shoulder height - and 100% off all drops were successful! All of the eggs survived, even with Onesi's drop of Duui's creation hitting Zeph's on the ground and bouncing up and off. 

We had to step up our testing to determine a winner. We went to B-block and dropped them off the second story balcony. 

And would you believe it, 100% of the eggs survived AGAIN!! 

As a last resort we went out into the quad and students launched their egg protectors up into the air, throwing them up as high as they possibly could! Finally we had four out of nine of the eggs crack. 

I was so impressed with the creativity of 1104 in this last challenge. They were engaged with the challenge of protecting their eggs, designing, standing on chairs to test how hard their creation landed, making modifications... It was so cool to see! 

I hope 1104 had a good year of science, and if they're taking Bio next year I will see them again; if not then I hope they leave science proud of the credits they've achieved throughout the year and with positive memories of their time learning science at Tamaki College :)

1104 Learns about Density

We've started a new topic for 4 credits at the end of Term 3! And depending on how hard we work, we could even do ANOTHER 4 credits in Term 4! On Thursday we started looking at different types of metals, making observations, and we weighed 1 cm cubed samples of them. 

Then yesterday we graphed their density (g/cm3) before learning what density actually is - the amount of particles packed into a given area. Objects or liquids that are more dense have more particles packed into the same volume.

First we watched this video.

Next I revealed to students the list of the liquids available to them and gave them each a piece of paper with two blank test-tubes drawn on it. Students got to draft a density tower that they thought would be most accurate, and then have a second guess by drawing a second test tube with some of the orders of liquids changed around.

The liquids we used were:

water (pink food colouring)

dishwashing liquid (green)

olive oil (yellow)

conditioner (white)

water + corn starch (bright red, lots of food colouring)

golden syrup (golden)

shampoo (white)

soy sauce (brown)

sunscreen (white)

baby shampoo (yellow)

I quite liked this activity because there was a lot of discovery learning happening. I didn't know the exact order in advance, and there were a lot of questions being thrown around like "is soy sauce going to sink through water?" which I got to answer with "I don't know, go and get a test tube and find out  before you add it to your density tower." There was also some logical thinking happening, like when Duui decided that dishwashing liquid would be more dense than water because when he uses it at home it moves to the bottom of the sink, and Brandon had a think about oil spills and water. 

I discovered that soy sauce is more dense than dishwashing liquid, because it sank right through the dishwashing liquid in my tower and sat on top of the conditioner layer. 

Most students guessed that the golden syrup would be the most dense. 

Here are some photos from our class:

Mac, David and Duui gently adding the next layer to their beakers. 

Mac's first attempt

Students working and cleaning out their beakers after failed attempts. It was quite good to get it wrong and have a layer sink through, because then they knew to add it earlier as it was more dense.

My attempt.

Mac's best "scientist face" as he studies his density tower - many more layers this time!

I think that this lesson (messy, loud, and a little silly) was a good one to illustrate density. 

Next week we'll have to start thinking about why cars and planes might be best made from more or less dense metals.. hmm...