The Human Evolution Zoo Trip

Year 13 Bio has been learning about Human Evolution for the last 2 weeks; as you can see below, Mokani has been receiving encouragement and support in his learning from Bones aka the freshly renamed "Sally the Skelly"

On Thursday last week we attended the Auckland Zoo Trends in Human Evolution session. This began by students comparing the skulls of a human, chimpanzee and gorilla. 

Key vocab about the skull differences included:

Foramen magnum

Zygomatic arches

Sagital crest

Nuchal crest

Masseter muscles (chewing muscles)

Brow ridges

Parallel (hominid) or parabolic (human) jaws and teeth

Protruding jaws

Canine teeth for aggression or not

Next, in pairs or threes students were given 2-3 skulls and asked to work out which was the most primitive, and which was the most recent, using what they had just learned from the compare-contrast activity.

Sela and Siale making friends with their skulls

Mokani and John looking at the zygomatic arches (cheek bones)

Rapture thinking about her skull.. 

Our student teacher Miss Graaf sharing her knowledge with the boys.

Then we compared the full skeletons of humans and gorillas, which from top-down included:

shoulder joints,

shoulder blades, 

rib cages,

spinal shape,

arm length, 

wrist joints,

palm length,

finger curve or not,

thumbs and grips (precision grip for humans),

pelvis shape,

gluteus maximus attachments and size

valgus angle,

leg length,

ankle joints,

grasping big toes or straight big toes,

arches in feet

The next activity was to bring all the skulls to the table and try to work out their order overall. This also included working out which skull was Ardi and which one was Lucy!  Turns out that Lucy also had a male friend with her, showing sexual dimorphism as his skull was significantly larger than her own. 

We found out that the main pattern that has developed over time is an increase in cranial capacity (cc), or brain size in comparison to body size. Species in the Homo genus have much larger brains for their size, and humans in particular have a large forehead with room for a frontal lobe. We know what frontal lobes are responsible for because of Phineas Gage's injury with a tamping iron... Having a larger brain allows for more complex behaviours, planning, problem solving, and communication. 

Then we moved on to tools! Everyone was given a bag with a replica tool inside of it, and asked to put their hand inside and imagine how to hold it, whether there was a comfortable way, what it might be used for.. then we took them out, looked at them, and grouped them:

Oldowan tools are associated with Homo habilis (aka Handy Man) and are also called Pebble tools. They are basically the core of a rock shaped by a few blows to have a sharp edge. They were mostly used for smashing or crushing. 

Archeulean tools have a typical teardrop shape. They are kind of like the swiss army knife of tools - they can be used for smashing, crushing, throwing, stabbing, slicing, as a hand axe etc. The core of the rock is still the main tool. These teardrop Acheulean tools remained fairly unchanged for 1 million years! 

1.5 million years ago (mya) if you were holding this Acheulean tool, you were holding the most sophisticated technology on the planet. 

Mousterian tools were less generalised and more specialised for different jobs like slicing, cutting, spear heads, hand axes, etc. They are usually made from flint. They were often made from the flakes that come off the core, and require a lot more planning to make.

We concluded our trip with a wet walk around the zoo in the rain for an hour. We got to see a baby giraffe, the new Auckland elephant, 2 sleepy lionesses, a curious meerkat who came and said hi, a red panda doing laps up and down a tree and John holding a convincing conversation with a flamingo. 

In other news, Tamaki College may be getting some of our own ancient skulls from +Karen Ferguson and her awesome 3D printer! Different African fossils can be downloaded from this website, if anyone else has a 3D printer at their school :)

Year 13's go to Liggins

Last week I bundled up eight of my nine Year 13's and took them off to the Liggins Institute up at Grafton Campus in Auckland. They run a fantastic programme that allows students' the opportunity to learn about a number of topics and gain some hands-on practical science lab experience. 

The topic that we were learning about was the importance of a Healthy Start to Life, and how the environment of a foetus can affect what it looks like, it's birthweight and it's health throughout life.

One thing that I particularly remember is being stumped about why 10 little cloned calves who were all genetically identical actually looked different from one another.. (?!?)  I was sitting at the back of the room thinking.. "maybe birth order has affected how many nutrients they have access too.. maybe they have been kept in different paddocks with different food sources.." I didn't even think about the intrauterine environment, from having different surrogate mothers!

It turns out that the environment we all experience inside of our mothers' uterus may have a big influence on the rest of our life, especially during middle-age! 

After morning tea the students got to have a go using a micropipette and setting up a DNA sample for PCR. They mixed and mingled into groups with other students from Edgewater College and Onewhero Area School and worked really well together.

Chandar Dewan demonstrating how to use a micropipette

Sela and Kellie with girls from the other two schools

John concentrating on delivering the right amount of polymerase to the PCR tube

Siale and Rapture looking like they're enjoying the day :)

After students had set up their tubes to be taken away and have the sample copied billions and billions of times, the next thing to do was run gel electrophoresis on different samples of DNA, to work out how long the chain of base pairs were in each sample. If a sample has more base pairs then it is longer and bigger, and will push more slowly through the gel. If the sample has less then it will move more quickly and therefore get further through the gel! Then students could use a pre-set ladder sample to work out how long each one was, using a computer programme. 

Norman all ready to run gel electrophoresis

At the end of the day everybody split into two groups to talk to two scientists. One was still a student working on his masters about nutrition, and students enjoyed asking him what sort of protein is found in Up and Go (soy) and what protein is better to take when working out (whey right before, and casein the night before). 

Mokani and John ready to ask a neuroscientist some questions

The other scientist was a neuroscientist working on Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease, and he brought a real brain with him for students to have a look at, touch and feel! It was covered in a resin to keep it from degrading, so the brain was quite hard and a little bit plastic-y feeling, but so interesting!

Sela, Kellie and Siale touching the brain of a 60-year old!

Siale and Kellie touching a REAL BRAIN!!!

Year 13 Biology made me so proud on the field trip. They displayed respect towards Chandar, the students from other school and each other, and everyone had integrity and responsibility while they participated with their groups during the activities of the day. 

To celebrate their success Mr Kettle and I treated them to some ice-creams and McDonalds fries on the way home. Keep up the great work team! :)

+Rapture Iosefa +Sela Tukuafu +Sialemoka Kuki-Lagatule +Jay Akau'ola-Laula +Mokani Glassie +Norman Fogavai +Keletiola Mapa +Kitana Tutu-Inamata

Year 9 Visits the Stardome

On Friday we took all of Year 9 off to Cornwall Park to visit the Stardome. 

Students got to walk to the top of the volcano and look around. Students weren't looking forward to the big walk up the hill, but there was a sense of achievement and success when they reached the top and were able to look around!   

We then returned to the Stardome for a show on the sky screen and a talk.  My group watched a show called 'Two Pieces of Glass' about the history of the telescope and how far it has developed with todays technology. It also taught us about the discoveries that telescopes have helped with.

This is a beautiful video of the night skies from a mountain in Spain for any students who were amazed by how big our universe is. 

After the show students got to explore the different activities in the foyer of the Stardome. There was a scale that measured their mass and calculated how much they would weigh on different planets and stars (billions of kgs on a neutron star!), real space suits and telescopes, a rolling-ball demonstration of gravity and a sphere that showed what the different planets look as they rotate, among other things. 

We then went and listened to a talk about how much fuel and speed space shuttles need to get up into outer space! One thing I remember is that at the very start of a space shuttle launch, by the time the back of the space ship has reached the point where the front of the space shuttle was (by the time it has travelled its own length) the shuttle is already travelling at 100km an hour! Students in my group were especially amazed to see a video by Chris Hadfield about how astronauts brush their teeth in space!  

We finished the day with some free time at lunch - I think the rugby game that happened on the field involved most of the boys in Year 9!

Year 13 Bio Goes to Liggins

On Friday five Year 13 students went to the Liggins Institute at the University of Auckland. The lab was run by a teacher who has previously taught at Tamaki College, so he knew all of our students already. 

Students learned about how important the prenatal environment is - how mothers can best prepare their unborn children for life, and that Liggins is helping to study how the prenatal environment can correlate with some diseases that appear during middle age.

Next students got to practice using pipettes and setting up samples for PCR.  Students then got to set up and run gel electrophoresis to try and work out how many base pairs were in a given sample of DNA.  Then it was time for lunch!

After refilling on Subway sandwiches, students got to meet some real scientists and ask them questions about their research and their time at university. One scientist surprised the students by talking about how her programme had allowed students to work with cadavers - people who had died and donated their body to science.  There were a few questions asked after that!  After the scientists left it was time to look at a photograph of the gel electrophoresis results and see who had run it properly!

As we finished up, the teachers stood to one side chatting about teaching and learning platforms and biology etc etc... the students completely blew us away by spontaneously moving the lab chairs into a circle and chatting to students from Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate! It was so nice to see, and there was  a LOT of laughing. 

Here's a video of the trip:

Rotoroa Island Sanctuary

At the end of Term 1 the Year 12 and 13 biology students from Tamaki College were lucky enough to go on a field trip to Rotoroa Island. 

This amazing island used to be a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, but nowadays it is a newly established conservation site for native New Zealand wildlife. Read on to find out what the trip had in store for our students!

Students enjoyed the ferry trip over, especially using binoculars to look at gulls and blue penguins (korora) and working together to recreate that iconic scene from Titanic... Thankfully the ferry didn't meet the same fate as the Titanic, and we were able to get our first glimpse of the island. 

Once we were all on Rotoroa students walked to the 1860's schoolhouse - the road provided a really nice view of the island we would spend our day exploring! Our guide Greg then gave an honest talk about the realities of keeping Rotoroa pest-free. Students learned about the many different ways to trap and humanely kill possums, stoats, rats and weasels that can reach the island. 

Once the talk had finished, Greg produced some possum, stoat and ferret skins.  At first the students were grossed-out but then curiosity prevailed! They enjoyed taking selfies with the skins, passing them to each other and asking Greg lots of questions. After the talk 5 students said they would be happy to come and share what they learned about pest control with some of my Year 9 classes!

After morning tea we split into two groups and off we went to help Greg with some research. Students took turns setting up simple tubes with banana and pieces of paper that had a strip of ink down the middle. The banana tempts animals into the tube and the ink ensures animals leave prints all over the paper as they walk. Researchers can then use their knowledge of prints to tell which animal it was, whether it is a pest, and whether they should lay traps. Greg also showed us how watery gum from Harakeke flax can act as a natural second-skin to help heal burns and eczema. 

We then did a lot of walking (including up a huge hill) with Greg stopping along the way to show us different traps, a huge weta, traditional Maori plant uses, how to use a tracking radio, and letting students use tablets to help identify different animal prints. 

After lunch students got to use the radio tracker to find soft-toy animals that had transmitters on them (the toys had to be hidden off the ground or the cheeky Weka would have run off with them), practice banding bird-legs and using binoculars to read band patterns from a distance. 

It was a big day - lots of sun, lots of walking, lots of learning - and quite a few of the students fell asleep on the way home! I hope they enjoyed themselves as much as I did and are looking forward to their next trip to Tiritiri Matangi! 

Year 12 Bio Trip to Long Bay

Yesterday Mr Major's Year 12 biology class went on a field trip to Long Bay to look for patterns and bands of living creatures on the rocky shore. 

I had a van full of lovely students who seemed to enjoy singing R Kelly and Akon... They also encouraged both me and the van as we chugged slowly up the Stanley Street motorway onramp! 

Once we arrived safe and sound at Long Bay groups of students placed quadrats along transect lines that were roughly 40m long! Everyone had to work quickly to complete the quadrats closest to the low tide mark before the tide came in and tried to soak their shoes! 

Students collecting data on Long Bay beach

It was a very sunny day and the students worked hard in the heat to cover the whole shore and accurately record the organisms living on it. 

Once all the data had been gathered we had a brief lunch in the shade. The boys were ambushed by ducks and we decided it was time to move on! 

Photo created using the Photo Grid app - boys being ambushed by ducks!

Next on the agenda was Awaruku Bush in Torbay. Everyone had to spray their shoes on the way in and out to protect Kauri from the fungus Phytophthora taxon Agathis that is transmitted by humans. 

Once we were inside the bush Mr Major taught everyone about Kauri trees, the traditional medicinal properties of Kawakawa leaves and also possibly pointed out a Kereru! 

Students walking in Awaruku Bush and learning about Kauri trees.

We finished the day with some well-earned soft serve ice cream in McDonald's and I quizzed students about their learning for the day...

Students were easily able to discuss how the type of organisms changed from high tide to low tide, and how factors such as evaporation, salt concentration, sun, predators and water played a part in the distribution of organisms at the beach! 

Lots of learning, duck attacks, and ice cream - a successful day all round :)