Cancer Project: Being a Patient Advocate

Just a few weeks ago, we finished our unit on the cell cycle.  The unit culminates with students presenting information on a certain cancer that they have researched.  We've done this project for two years now, and each time I feel like something is missing. I don't like to ask students to do work without a purpose--either to help them understand concepts in the class more deeply or to teach them a skill that will serve them beyond the AP Biology classroom.  This project was hardly doing either. Last year, I modified the project slightly, but after this year's presentations, I finally decided on the purpose of this project.  Instead of just presenting information on the cancer, students are going to become patient advocates.  They'll be researching information that would be helpful for a friend who is going through a cancer diagnosis.  When they are adults and face a health crises or someone close to them does, it will be helpful for them to know how to advocate for the patient.

In the past few years, I have had a few friends receive cancer diagnoses. There are two in particular who stand out to me.  One remained fairly passive in the process, didn't ask questions, and wasn't active in seeking treatment.  The result was tragic.  My other friend did incredible amounts of research, had active discussions with her doctors and chose her doctors and treatments with full knowledge of risks and rewards. Her outcome has been far more positive. I want to equip my students to make informed decisions about their health and be able to help others to do the same. Of course, knowledge doesn't guarantee a good outcome, but knowing how to find the information beforehand can be a huge help.

I've embedded the information and rubric I give students, and a link to it is here. I also have a Google Form that I use to evaluate students' projects as they are presenting. I merge that information into a feedback document for each student.

Book-ending Christmas break with Lorenzo's Oil

Keeping students engaged on the last day before Christmas break can be a challenge, but I don't believe in wasting time.  We just finished our unit on Mendelian Genetics, and watching Lorenzo's Oil is a great complement to what we've done in AP Biology so far.  Last year I found a study unit on the movie here. We started with the activity demonstrating what happens to nerve signals as they become demyelinated. Students start with a "brain bucket full of signals (ping pong balls) and must pass them from one student to the next until it reaches the "body" bucket. We count how many signals (ping pong balls) make it into the body bucket in 10 seconds and then start again. But the second time
we do it, two students have to sit out and the remaining students may not move any closer to each other. We repeat one more time with two more students sitting out, to get a feel for how signal transmissions changes as more of the myelin is lost from nerve cells.

Then we get out the snacks and start watching the movie.  There are questions provided in the study unit to help them keep focused and delve deeper into the science of the movie.

When we get back from break we do the competitive inhibition activity with paper clips and finish the movie.  In the competitive inhibition activity we look at how providing more unsaturated fatty acids "competes" with the saturated fatty acids to hinder the production of very long chain saturated fatty acids (VLCSFA).

As we finish the movie, it leads naturally into a discussion of medical ethics, and is a great segue into our molecular genetics unit.

Modeling Mitosis with Oreos

Yesterday we did another one of my favorite "labs" in biology.  The students had just read the mitosis and cell cycle chapter.  To review the events of mitosis, we do an activity I found on Amy Balling's blog, Ballin with Balling. She talked about giving her students an engaging activity on the last day before Christmas break.  This involved pulling off the tops of double stuffed Oreos and using sprinkles, toothpicks and the cream covered half of the Oreos to model the process of mitosis and cytokinesis.

Her blog post also included a link to the lab sheet she designed to go with the activity.  I used her lab sheet, but reformatted it to be only two pages long.  Here's the reformatted version.

It has been a big hit with the students both years that I've used it.  It's one of the few opportunities that students have to eat their lab.

Unit 6 Guided Reading-Molecular Genetics

My AP Biology class will be finishing our Mendelian Genetics unit right before Christmas vacation. So, as soon as we return to school in January, we'll be diving into what I believe is the most intense unit in AP Biology.  We also get to do the high-tech labs of bacterial transformation and electrophoresis.  Fortunately there are several hands-on activities in addition to the labs to help make molecular genetics more concrete for students.

Here are the guided reading questions by chapter for this unit:

Chapter 16: The Molecular Basis of Inheritance

Chapter 17: Gene Expression-From Gene to Protein

Chapter 18: Regulation of Gene Expression

Chapter 19: Virus

Chapter 20: DNA Tools and Biotechnology

Chapter 21: Genomes and Their Evolution

I Have..., Who Has...?

I have seen several sites using "I Have, Who Has?" cards to get their class moving and reviewing. The other day I saw this mitosis meiosis loop game on the TES website. I took the words and definitions and put them into the "I have, who has" format.  Then I decided that I wanted a template to easily allow me to do this with other topics.  Here is the template I made in docs.  It'll allow 19 words/concepts into the activity.  When I printed it out two-sided the other day, the front and back matched up nicely--I was worried they'd be off.  All of the cards are now laminated and ready to go.

I did the activity today with my class.  This is when I discovered a design flaw in my cards.  I forgot when I print on both sides of the paper, the left side of the first page lines up with the right side of the second page. We only went through half the cards when we got to the card that said we were finished.  The other half of the cards had their actual definition on it!  My students were good sports about it.  As soon as class was over, I fixed the document and my template.

Cellular Respiration Lab with Bubbling Yeast

We did this lab last year in my Biology class and I loved it!  Of course, we did it again this year. The idea for the lab came from  www.mysciencebox.org/bubblingyeast. Alas, when I tried to check the site today, the account had been suspended. The lab itself includes some links to sites that do work though.

I appreciate that this lab uses basic laboratory supplies and household items that I already had on hand.  It also gives us quantifiable data, as students are busy counting the number of bubbles coming out of the pipets with the yeast. Next year we may try a different variable that the original lab suggested as extensions to the lab, such as varying the food source for the yeast.

Here are some things I was reminded about as we did the lab this morning.  We have to get the yeast solution to go down into the bulb of the pipet.  To do this, we held the pipet stem up and flicked the stem of the pipet to encourage the yeast down into the bulb. While I demonstrated how to get the yeast down into the bulb, I forgot to cover the tip of the stem.  As yeast solution sprayed all over me, I quickly remembered that I needed to cover the tip with a paper towel.  We put several drops of bromothymol blue to test for the presence of carbon dioxide.  As you can see in the pictures, the pipets of yeast in warm and room temperature water, quickly turned from blue to yellow.  I also had no success getting my kidney beans to germinate.  They mainly got moldy and stinky.  I'll go back to black beans next time. Last year, even the beans had a noticeable color change in the bromothymol blue.  We do beans along side the yeast to help students understand that plants go through respiration as well (and thus produce carbon dioxide).

Here is the teacher information sheet that the website gave and here is the lab I put together from the information from the website.