Unit 4 Reading Guides-Mitosis and Meiosis

We're getting ready to start our Mitosis and Meiosis unit, so I've made some revisions to the guided reading questions for this two-chapter unit. Here are the Holzclaw guided reading questions pared down to fit within the new AP Biology framework.

Chapter 12: The Cell Cycle

Chapter 13: Meiosis and the Sexual Life Cycles 

Independent and Dependent Variables: Pumpkins in the Patch

I felt like my Living Environment students needed some more practice determining what the independent and dependent variables are in an experiment.  I also wanted to emphasize that when we graph the results of our experiments, the independent variable values go on the x-axis and the depended variable values go on the y-axis.

We were just going to work with a practice set we used earlier in the year, but would place the independent variable horizontally (x-axis) and the dependent variable vertically (y-axis).  I found this set of variables in the blog post on in stillness the dancing titled Functions from the Start.

The envelopes of the variables were in my binder ready to go.  Then I read Sarah Carter's latest blog post on Math = Love, and knew I needed to change what we were doing.  I shamelessly copied her activity, making a few modifications.   She called this activity "Ghosts in the Graveyard." I decided to call it Pumpkins in the Patch so I could use it any time in the fall.

After downloading her PDF files, I converted them into Google docs,  This allowed me to change the font and title. Otherwise the challenges are word for word.  We'll use pumpkins instead of ghosts, of course.  My other change was the answer sheet that the students fill out as they go.   Instead of just a table to fill out, I put some of what I learned in the teacher workshop I went to last Friday on using Google apps in the classroom to work.  To emphasize dependent on the y-axis and independent on the x-axis, the answer sheet is full of vertical and horizontal arrows that I put together in google drawings.

The left-over Halloween candy will come in handy for prizes when we do this in class later in the week. Each time a team of students finishes one challenge, they put a pumpkin with their name on it in one of the patches (big circles drawn on the white board).  Each pumpkin patch will have a different point value that all of the pumpkins in it will receive. At the end of the game, the point value for each patch will be revealed.  The team with the most points will get a few fun sized candy bars.

Here's the challenge document with the pumpkins.  Here's the answer sheet.

A Big Picture of Photosynthesis

After giving my students a big picture of cellular respiration, I wanted them to also have a big picture for photosynthesis.  I found this blog post  on the Science Tutor.  There was a graphic organizer for the Calvin cycle and a story board for the light reactions. I used them last year, but I wanted my students to actually see the process of the light reactions. This year I spent some time with shapes in MS Word to put together a picture of both the light reactions and the Calvin cycle.

During class I give my students a set of instructions to work through to help them understand what is going on in the diagrams and in the process of photosynthesis itself. Here is the document they work through. The document also includes links to two different videos on photosynthesis to help students understand what's going on in their diagram.

A Big Picture of Cellular Respiration

When we start learning cellular respiration in AP Biology, I pull out my "relic" from college. It's a yellowed piece of 11" by 17" paper dated 9/25/95.  On it is a photocopied, hand-drawn diagram of the process of cellular respiration. Dr. John Azevedo drew the diagram and gave everyone in his Microbiology class a copy.  I wrote notes all over it, and by the end of that class, understood cellular respiration better than I ever had.

Now, every year I teach AP Bio, each of my students gets a photocopied, hand-drawn 11" by 17" diagram.  My hope is that they always have the big picture of cellular respiration in mind as we work through what is happening.  To make it even more concrete, I have punched out several different colored shapes for students to use as molecules going through the process.

I have a whole set of questions that students work through to help understand the diagram better. This is the slide that I put up for them to use to work through the diagram, followed by a set of questions to gauge their understanding of the process.

Maximizing Lab Report Feedback While Minimizing Grading Time

Over the summer a blog post caught my eye because it mentioned giving feedback to students without taking hours.  I loved this idea, since grading AP Biology formal lab reports takes forever. The post in Mrs. Brosseau's Binder reminded me that often I am writing the same comments on students' labs. I put together a Google form, trying to remember the most common comments I give when grading labs. I added all of the possible comments in the form and then also added the option "other" which allows me to type in whatever comments I might want to add that are not already on the list.

Here is the link to my Lab Grading Google Form.

I needed a way to take the information from the form that goes into a spreadsheet to give individual feedback to students.  One way to do that would be with the form add-on docAppender.  For my classes though, I found that the add-on autoCrat in Sheets worked best for me.  I needed to make a template for my feedback to go in, and then autoCrat makes a document for each student whose lab I grade. It took me a little while to figure out how I wanted the template to look and to get all of the tabs in to map the information from the Sheet into the template. Now when I grade lab reports, I can give my students rich feedback in a nicely formatted document. Then I just drag the newly made documents into the Google Drive folders that I share with my students. I love it!

Here's the link to the Lab Grade Template that autoCrat merges for me.

Grading labs comes down to these steps:

1. Create a Google Form to use when grading labs (or use mine).
   
2. Grade labs by clicking the comment choices in the form, or adding other comments as needed in the "other" option in the form.
   
3. Once you have graded the labs, go to the Sheet that is created from the form responses.
   
4. Make sure to install the autoCrat add-on from the add-ons menu.
   
   
   
   
5. Start up autoCrat and answer the questions it asks--such as which template to use for the merge.  You can already have one that you've made or use mine. 
   
   
6. After answering questions, start the merge, and viola! you have documents of feedback for each of your students.
   

One other explanation of my form.  I grade each section of my students' labs with a rubric using a score range of 1 to 4, but each section of the lab gets weighted differently.  In the end, it all adds up to 100 points.  I add the formula to calculate that in sheets so I don't have to.  Here is the rubric I use for grading labs.

Organelle Elections

Over the summer I found an article by Brad Graba on the NSTA blog who had turned learning about the cellular organelles into an election campaign. As the nation's election nears, it seemed an appropriate activity to help the students to learn their organelles.

Each pair of students had to design a campaign poster for their chosen organelle.  They could be creative with their slogans, but each slogan had to relate to some function of that organelle.  They also had to create 4 mudslinging posters against other organelles that they were hoping wouldn't win the election.

I put together a document of instructions to get the students going.

Here are a few of the smear posters.

As we were grading the quizzes on the organelle chapter after this activity, several times I heard, "I got that one right because of your presentation!"  I didn't lecture and they learned what they needed to know.  That's a win in my books.

Working with Enzyme Models

I love to have models that students can work with to help understand a concept. So much of what we do in AP Bio is too small to see--even with a microscope.  We can talk about how these small things work, but I find it more meaningful if we can get our hands on it. We do complete the AP enzyme lab and get to experiment with what factors affect the rate of the enzyme catalyzed reaction of peroxidase with hydrogen peroxide and guaiacol.  Fortunately, before the lab we did two activities to give them some concrete pictures of what is happening with enzymes.

The first exercise we did involved using pool noodles as models of enzymes, substrate, and inhibitors (both competitive and allosteric).  I got this idea from a blog post on We Teach High School and got the directions from Mr. Mohn's blog (Toucan Play That Game). Students use pool noodles to demonstrate what is happening in 4 different scenarios.  Here is the document I put together for my students to use from those two blogs.

I loved this activity.  "Allosteric" sounds so esoteric, but when you can push a wedge of a pool noodle into another pool noodle and watch the active site change, it suddenly becomes real.

I found the Need For Speed lab on Pinterest.  I modified it to use in my classroom.  After doing the activity this week, I've decided that I want to modify it even more.  Since the students had already worked with competitive inhibitors with pool noodles, I think we can skip that part with the pennies and instead focus on changes in the rate of reaction when enzyme and substrate concentrations change.

Unit 3 Reading Guides--Cellular Metabolism

In a couple of weeks, we'll begin our unit on cellular energetics. The class will be immersed in cellular respiration and photosynthesis.  Here are the Holzclaw guided reading questions pared down to fit with the new AP Biology framework.

Chapter 8: An Introduction to Metabolism

Chapter 9: Cellular Respiration

Chapter 10: Photosynthesis