Year 12 Mutation Maltesers Game

Year 12 Bio recently played a game to illustrate how mutations enter the gene pool and change in frequency, and how mutations can be helpful, harmful or neutral (and this can change if the environment changes!)

Equipment needed for this game: 

teaspoons

tablespoons

forks

plastic forks with the middle prongs removed

bowls

shot glasses

maltesers

In this game, students 'live' in different populations at tables around the room. These populations all have a similar niche and are trying to gain access to the same resource - maltesers. These maltesers are found in bowls on a table in the middle of the room.

The game progresses through several rounds or 'generations.'

In the first round, each group has the same adaptation for gathering their resource - plastic forks. Students needed to gather a resource and keep it balanced all the way back to their table, where they could deposit the resource and pass on the fork to the next person. Each group roughly gathered the same amount of maltesers, and they all survived to produce the next generation.

In the next generation one of the populations had a mutation - they lost the middle prongs of their fork! We played another round, and the group missing the middle prongs were unable to gather any maltesers, because the gap in the middle was too big! 

Alas, this was a harmful mutation. It didn't enter the gene pool of the overall population because it failed to help them gain enough resources to survive, and unfortunately that group couldn't pass their genes or alleles onto the next generation. 

(We let the group come back in with a normal fork though, so they could keep playing).

The next generation had another mutation - their adaptation to help them gather was a tablespoon! This turned out to be a helpful mutation, as it was easier to balance and they could gather resources faster than the other groups. 

As they were more successful, in the next generation more groups had tablespoons, as the helpful allele became more frequent in the gene pool.

After a few tablespoon generations another mutation occurred - a teaspoon! I thought this mutation would also be harmful but it turned out to be neutral, as having a smaller spoon didn't seem to affect the ability to balance a malteser in it. 

However!!! Suddenly the environment changed!!

The bowls of maltesers became shot glasses of maltesers. Suddenly having a smaller teaspoon was an advantage in the new environment, as the teaspoon adaptation was too large to get into the bottom of the shot glass. 

The group with the smaller teaspoon SHOULD have had much greater access to maltesers and the next generation should have had a lot greater frequency of alleles for smaller teaspoons. 

However, my class are resourceful and very competitive, and the tablespoon groups quickly worked out that they could use the handle of the tablespoon to scoop out maltesers! So that point was sort of lost, but the rest of the game was good to illustrate how mutations arise and change in frequency in populations over generations, depending on whether they help or harm the organisms' ability to survive or reproduce in their environment.

Mutations in the story:

Fork (at the start)

Fork with prongs missing (harmful, gap too wide for maltesers)

Tablespoon (helpful - easier to balance than fork)

Teaspoon (neutral - turned out to be no different from table spoon)

Change of environment to shot glass (teaspoon advantage now to fit in the glass)

Year 12 Makes Vocab Keychains

Vocabulary is such a big part of biology, it's almost like having to learn another language sometimes! 

Often in exam answers certain key-words have to be included, or students will have to understand a key word in a question to be able to answer! 

Our Tamaki College Specialist Classroom Teacher suggested taking a tactile approach to learning vocabulary, so I decided to get Year 12 biology to make their own vocabulary keychains.

First, students picked which vocabulary they would like to include on their keychain from these sheets:

Enzyme properties

Enzyme functions

Photosynthesis organelle structure - chloroplasts
Photosynthesis
Factors limiting photosynthesis
DNA replication

Then they cut them out, folded them, and whipped off down to the office to laminate them with Helen.

 When they came back students hole punched and attached each keyword and it's definition to a keychain.

Then we had 10 minutes SSR becoming familiar with their keychain, flipping back and forward between words and definitons.

Students can take them away and look at them over the weekend, or attach them to their keys and keep them until the real exams at the end of the year!

These are a more tactile version of the online vocab sets found in our 12BIO quizlet class :)

Year 12 Makes DNA

Year 12 Bio have been working like absolutely superstars towards their upcoming practice NCEA exam. We have finally covered all of the content (there was a LOT!) and now they are ready to revise and refresh.

On Monday and Tuesday we made lolly models of DNA, and then used them again to demonstrate DNA replication. It seemed to work quite well, and I hope the class enjoyed getting in there and making the models for themselves. 

We used liquorice as the 'sugar' part of the backbone, and added marshmallows as the 'phosphate' - that was the best that we could do for the backbone of the double helix! 

Then we added wine gums as the four bases, making sure to only pick 4 colours of wine gums and only pair them with their 'complimentary base pair.' 

Here's an example of the finished product. :) 

My next post will be some top tips for how to study and revise for exams, both online and off! 

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 :)