Blog Post Week 8

Week 8

Today we checked our fast plants for the last time since planting them. Ours was not alive anymore which is sad, but this was such a fun, interactive mini-project! I think this would be fun to do in an elementary classroom because students would be so excited to check on their plants each morning and will easily learn the stages of a plant's life cycle.

After checking on our plants we reviewed our main takeaways in reading reflections from last week with our table groups and then shared them with the class. Then we reviewed what we learned in last week's lab. We discussed the difference in genotype and phenotype and then answered a few questions about inherited versus acquired traits.

 We also did a simulation activity on how mutations impact proteins. I really enjoyed getting to explore these simulations individually to observe how mutations work. We learned that there are three types of mutations: point, insertion, and deletion. Point mutation changes a single DNA letter and includes missense mutations, nonsense mutations, and silent mutations. Insertion mutations add one or more DNA bases, and deletion mutations take away one or more DNA bases. 

We furthered our learning and exploration of codons and mutations with a superhero activity. We worked with a partner to identify types of mutations and see how they affected the person. This was a fun way to learn that mutations can have positive or negative effects or be neutral. We learned that the majority of genetic mutations are neutral which I didn't know before! Overall, I liked this activity and thought the topics we covered in lab today were really interesting, I can't remember the last time I learned about genetics/codons! I would love to use an online simulator as an activity for this lesson but am wondering what other types of even more hands-on activities I could also include.