Super Structures taking shape!

Lots of meetings after school and getting home late ... 2" of rain over the last 24 hours ... snowing this evening.

Selected Topics in Science - We continued our lab / contest to build a structure weighing less than 34 grams that will support at least 50 pounds ... some great ideas and several restarts.  Tomorrow we are going to the computer lab for some research time and will spend half the block continuing our super structure lab.

We spent the day in Computer Science working up a storyboard on student's exit projects.  These are due tomorrow.

In Genetics, after our morning quiz, we reviewed again the biochemical pathways of photosynthesis and respiration.  We then tested water for the amount of dissolved oxygen present in the sample using LaMotte kits and the winkler method which included a titration and endpoint color change.  We resupplied all the kits which we will use in our first lab after Christmas in AP Biology ... The Dissolved Oxygen and Primary Productivity Lab.  Tomorrow we are going over our discussion questions on Cancer - Chapter 18.

Pats first basketball game tonight against South Warren ... hope all went well ... Go Pats!

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Super Structure contest starts today!

We will be having school on Friday since the game is late ... pep rally at 1:45.

In Genetics today, we continued to work on the immune system questions ... secondary response and some work on the structure of antibodies.  Also we will be doing a lab on dissolved oxygen in water tomorrow using Lamotte kits. This is in preparation for AP second semester.  We handed out AP books today with the syllabus (posted on patscience.com).  In AP, we have a Christmas reading assignment on ecology.  Trying to get a head of the snow days!

We peer evaluated our tutorial programs today in Computer Science.  Most used WWII as a subject area and our audience for this program was fifth graders.  There were some disappointing efforts along with a couple of excellent programs.  Congrats to David Rutledge for programming the best tutorial program.  This week we are going to work on our exit projects.

Finally, in Selected Topics in Science, we started our Super Structure contest ... the structure, made of popsicle sticks (34 grams max, must be 8 inches tall) will be tested on Friday. We have a list of the world's biggest and best structures we are using as a background study.  Maybe we have an up and coming Frank Lloyd Wright!     ...   We have several other projects we are working on this week as the glue dries ... junior exit projects and ACT prep.

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Saturday - a little shopping and ...

Congrats to the football team on their advancement to the state finals ... the only team ever in the history of ACS and Scottsville to be in the final game.

Shopping with Ms. Roberts today ... Hobby Lobby had tons of stuff made in the USA ... you know how I feel about this.  The other night, I could only find seven items in the whole LL Bean catalog made in the USA.  Remember this holiday season to buy local first, the CommonWealth second and Made in the USA.  The job you save may be your own!

Worked on the farm this afternoon, moving brush and burning a brush pile (not very environmentally sound).

One more day of deer hunting - modern gun ... be careful!

Winter softball conditioning starts on Tuesday ... we will go Tu and Th next week, may be out of school on Friday?

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Have a great Thanksgiving Break! ... and a pict!

Pep rally at school today ... lost considerable time in both First and Second blocks.

Yesterday we had the Amazing Race to finish off fall conditioning in softball.  Congrats to Keanna, Kellie and Katelyn for figuring out the riddles and bringing in all nine clues.

We did a quick overview of the immune system and Chapter 17 to start the day in Genetics.  Afterwards, got a quick AP review game be before heading to the Pep Rally.  On Monday, we will go over our discussion questions for Chapter 17, hand out ... AP Books, AP Lab 12 and the AP syllabus ... time to get to work and we can work on both Genetics and AP before heading to Christmas break.

We only had a few minutes in Computer Science so checked our programs to review on Monday.  Most of next week will be spent generating our final student generated programs due the last week of school before Christmas.

In Selected Topics we did an overview of the Structure Lab - The Tower we will begin on Monday ... an engineering problem.  We also went over most of the questions in the Big 100 - our final for the semester taken later.

Hope you all have a great Thanksgiving vacation ... Good luck to the football Pats in Louisville ... don't get distracted by the hoopla ... the next play is the most important play ... Go Pats!   rr

Monday of a short week / Last Fall conditioning day for softball!

Today in Genetics, we finished our second and last restriction enzyme / electrophoresis lab.  We went over the discussion questions and handed the lab write up in during class.  We also went over the discussion questions in Chapter 16 - Human Ancestry and assigned a few discussion questions in Chapter 17 - The Immune System (an important chapter for AP).  Tomorrow we will start Chapter 17 with an overview ... humoral and cell-mediated responses ...   We will also play our review game instead of having a morning quiz.

We finally finished our tutorial program and we plan to peer check it tomorrow ... allowing all students to test each others programs during class.

In Selected Topics, we finished our unit on Human Anatomy and we have a take home test for tonight ... open resource and open note.  Eighty questions, most of which we had on our daily quizzes.  Tomorrow we are working on our exit projects which are due the last week of this semester.

Today was our last softball condition session of the fall and we played our annual Amazing Race game ... congrats to Keanna, Kellie and Katelyn ... a few miles of running and some tough riddles but you prevailed!  Again congrats!

Tomorrow is a pep rally ... we will parts of first and second blocks.

Patriot Football Showdown tonight ... Good Luck!

Rematch with Lone Oak tonight ... good luck!

Today in Genetics and Biotechnology, we continued our second restriction lab ... measuring gels and plotting the information on log paper to estimate the size of unknown fragments cut with different restriction enzymes. We did not completely finish and will finsh up on Monday along with going over our discussion questions on Chapter 16. 

We finished our tutorial problems today and will conduct our peer review on Monday.  Next week we are working on our final projects.

In Selected Topics today we discussed topics in reproduction and took a quiz on human organ systems.  Tried to watch the Friday Show but the internet was off ... so finished working on our Human Organ vocabulary.  Next week we will finish organ systems on Monday and review.  Test on Human Organ systems as well as, Osmosis/diffusion on Tuesday before we head to Thanksgiving.

Hope you all have a great and safe weekend ... rr.

Restriction Lab II today ...

Today in Genetics we completed our second and last electrophoresis lab to cut and analyze lambda DNA.  The gels are destaining tonight and tomorrow we will make some calculations to determine the size of DNA strands after cutting the DNA with different restriction enzymes.

We have one or two students to complete their tutorial program ... hopefully we can wrap this us tomorrow and have some peer evaluations.

We are in our fourth day of human anatomy study of organ systems ... today was the human brain and we finished our muscle identification activity.  Tomorrow is reproduction and sense organs.  We hope to wrap up this anatomy unit tomorrow or Monday before we leave for Thanksgiving vacation.

Tomorrow the softball team is hitting at BSA ... schedule is by my classroom door.

Restriction Lab II tomorrow ...

Busy week ... faculty meeting / PD after school today so late getting to this blog update.

In Genetics, we finished our Chapter 15 discussion questions today and started our chapter on Human Ancestry and Evolution, Chapter 16.  Tomorrow however, we will be doing our second Restriction Enzyme / Electrophoresis Lab.  This lab is a step up from our first lab and is also an AP Biology lab.  Students will cutting a viral DNA (Lambda) with three restriction enzymes (enzyme found in bacteria that cut through specific DNA sequence) ... BamHI, EcoRI and HindIII.  We will the load these samples into an agarose gel and to separate the DNA fragments.  We will analyze our gels on Friday after we stain them with Methylene Blue and destain overnight.

In Computer Science, we continued work on our tutorial programs for 5th graders.  Most students are generating programs using World War II as their subject area.  We should finish be Friday.

We continued our study of human body organ systems ... today the immune system, types of antibodies and the importance of breast feeding from an immunity standpoint.  Toward the end of class we worked on our identification of bones and muscles of the body.

Tomorrow there will be a change in softball conditioning because of predicted rainfall ... check my room for the update tomorrow.

Also have updated our Genetics page with the data from our Drosophila Lab.

Be careful driving to school in the morning ... appears it will be raining with fog.

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Homeroom tomorrow AM ...

Students will be going to homeroom during first block tomorrow.  Grade updates will be handed out to each student, students will vote for basketball homecoming candidates and some housekeeping tasks for juniors and seniors.

In Genetics today, we finished our restriction enzyme analysis lab.  This included calculating fragment size of Lambda DNA cut with EcoRI using a Lambda / HindIII standard.  This is half of AP Lab 6.  We will be doing a more extensive version of this lab on Thursday and Friday of this week.  This technology is common in many fields of biotechnology ... including forensics.  We started our discussion questions for Chapter 15 ... Population Genetics.

In Computer Science this week, we have a Microsoft Visual BASIC problem to create a program that will quiz fifth graders on one of three topics ... World War II, Astronomy or Geography.  This program will give the correct response for wrong responses and give the student a score after 10 questions.

We continued our study in Organ Systems today with the circulatory system in Selected Topics today.  We studied the flow of blood through the heart, differences between arteries / veins and the components of blood.  We had a quiz on this information afterwards.  We finished the day with a practicum over the major bones of the body.  Tomorrow we will be continuing on human organ systems ... endocrine and immune systems and practice ACT questions in science.

Wouldn't want to be a deer today!!!

Congrats to the Pats last night in football ... one game at a time.  Krisston is running at the state AA championship this morning in Lexington ... good luck and a sub-20 minutes to her!

Yesterday we had our last fly count in Genetics ... I left the data at school but will post it on Monday.  We counted almost 4000 fruit flies by sex and mutation then ran a Chi Square Analysis on the data.  Everyone did a great job and will be able to breeze through this lab in AP later.  We are going to go over the results of our restriction electrophoresis lab on Monday and cover the discussion question in Chapter 15 (I will post these on our website ... www.patscience.com

In computer science we worked through some difficulties with our Casino problem.  Checked off a couple of students ... will check the rest of the class on Monday.  We are working on our final projects ... lots of good ideas!  We are making some good progress in Microsoft Visual BASIC.

In Selected Topics in Science we started our unit on Human Anatomy.  Friday was the digestive system.  Circulatory and bones of the body on Monday.  This mini-unit will last five day.

Hope you all have a safe start to deer season!
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What is on the stove for Friday ...

Genetics - We will finish our Drosophila Lab ... last count (1500+ flies) and Chi Square Analysis ... Caption Friday tomorrow also ...

Introduction to Computer Programming - We will finish and check our casino problem tomorrow.

Selected Topics in Science - Tomorrow starts our 5 days of Human Anatomy ... digest and circulatory systems tomorrow!

Electrophoresis Day!

Late getting home ...

Genetics - Today we did our electrophoresis lab using Lambda DNA (viral) cut with two restriction enzymes ... HindIII and EcoRI ... we are destaining the gels tonight and will analyze them tomorrow.  Don't forget caption Friday ... have those ready to go!

Introduction to Computer Science ... We continued on with our casino problem ... slow go in the coding section ... will work on this problem again tomorrow ... all in Microsoft Visual BASIC.

Selected Topics in Science ... Today we finished our Osmosis Lab and handed it in.  Tomorrow we start 5 days of Human Organ system study.  Starting with the digestive system.

After school - softball conditioning at the Barren River Dam ... winning team was the Smoochers ... 8 players in 45 minutes ran 16 miles and 26 Dam hills ... pretty good!  All together the 16 participants today ran for a total of 31 miles and 40 Dam hills.  Of course, we refreshed at Ranger Bob's afterwards ... a well deserved stop!

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Diffusion and Osmosis Lab today ...

Club schedule today so we had a lot of people out of first block and few out of second.  The rest of the week looks good.

Genetics and Biotechnology - Today we finished our Chapter 6 discussion on the genetics of intelligence and did some prep on our Restriction Enzyme lab for tomorrow.  This electrophoresis of DNA lab is a required lab in AP so our genetic students are getting a head start.  We will be running an agarose gel to separate fragments of DNA in order to estimate their size ... will try and get some picts of our gels on my website.

Introduction to Computer Science - Our class worked on a Microsoft Visual BASIC problem to make a math tutorial for an elementary school student.  A step up from what we have been programming.  We will finish this problem tomorrow.

Selected Topics in Science - Today we finished and checked our biome study and biome vocabulary.  We had a lab over diffusion and osmosis today and will finish it tomorrow.  In this lab, we measured osmosis between a 0.0 molar solution, a 1.0 molar solution of sucrose and a soft drink to calculate the molar equivalency of the soft drink.  We collected data today and will analyze it tomorrow.

1800 flies and counting ... Club Schedule Tomorrow!

Genetics and Biotechnology - We made our Drosophila crosses two weeks ago ... Sepia (autosomal brown eye mutants) and White (X-linked white eye mutant) crosses ... we counted out 1800 flies and will count again on Friday ... Drosophila (fruit fly) life cycle is about 14 days.  We gave the flies a dose of Fly-Nap and that puts them asleep for about 40 minutes. We finished the day with reading groups discussing Ridley's Genome book.

Introduction to Computer Programming - We started two problems in Microsoft Visual BASIC ... A math tutoring program and a casino slot machine simulation.  Everyone is off to a good start in Microsoft Visual BASIC.  Also talked about our final in this class which is designing a program in an area of interest ... will update this later

Selected Topics in Science - Today we began the day with a graphing problem and later finished our study of terrestrial biomes. We are just starting out second Biology Unit which includes a lot of CATS testing review and a junior exit project.

After school ... late night!
Softball Conditioning
Softball Booster Club Meeting
Allen County Bee Club Meeting

Tomorrow is Club Schedule so many people will be out of class.

Fly Count on Monday! They are ready!

Genetics and Biotechnology - Today we started class with a little breakfast buffet ... finished Chapter 13-14 discussion questions ... We are reading a couple chapters out of Matt Ridley's book Genome. This book has 23 chapters (one for each chromosome).  We are reading Chapter 6 on Intelligence, and another of their choice. Also, APES participants need to hand in their responses to our discussion questions over Chapters 13-14.
We will be counting out our fruit fly crosses on Monday ... two mutants ... Sepia eye (autosomal recessive) and white eye (sex-linked trait) ... normal eye color in fruit flies (Drosophila)

Computer Programming - We finished out fourth Microsoft Visual BASIC problem today by designing a Graphical User Interface for a game that allows the user to guess a number between 1-100.  We will check problems on Monday and introduce our next set of problems.

Selected Topics in Science - We talked about 5 types of bacteria and read a CNN article about the cholera epidemic currently in Haiti.  We started our study of major biomes of the world.  We will finish this study on Monday.

Tomorrow will be the CC regionals ... GO PATRIOTS! ... this is the 21st year of CC at ACS ... some great runners this year and many throughout those years ... check the history of Pat CC out on www.patscience.com

Blue People of Kentucky

Selected Topics in Science - After our BGTC field trip yesterday, we started our final Biology Unit with an article about the Blue People of Troublesome Creek.  This was a case study of a family that had methomoglobinemia (caused by an enzyme deficiency) which is an autosomal recessive trait. Tomorrow we will be studying biomes of the world and biogeochemical cycles ... especially the nitrogen cycle.

Genetics - With over half the class gone, we went over our discussion questions in Chapter 13 (will try and attach a link to these questions).  We will finish these questions and those in Chapter 14 tomorrow.  Next week will be our fly count and a lab on electrophoresis of DNA.

Posted under Genetics on www.patscience.com

Introduction to Computer Science -  We made good progress on our first four Microsoft Visual BASIC problems today.  Spent over half the block showing ways to program the Graphical User Interface.

Back from BGTC ... rain, but a good day!

Our Selected Topics field trip to Bowling Green Technical College went well today ... we saw 5 former Allen County - Scottsville students while we were there.  BGTC offers alot ... your general education classes at half the price of WKU, certificates and 2 year degrees so you can get out and start making money sooner, job placement ... lots of different courses ... affordable and flexible ... check it out on their website.

http://www.bowlinggreen.kctcs.edu/

We visited all three Warren County campuses ... two more are in Glasgow and one in Franklin ... it is a good option for students with limited resources ($$$) and want to stay local!
Tomorrow back to work in our final biology unit!

Computer Science - Microsoft Visual BASIC programming continues ...

Genetics -  Tomorrow - Quiz on the Blue People of Troublesome Creek, KY  //  Discussion questions for Chapter 13.  APES students will be out the rest of the week.

BGTC - Field Trip on Wednesday

Election Day ...

We have the APES program for the rest of the week which will remove about half the class from first block ... we will be working on discussion questions on our next two chapters  on Thursday and Friday with a reading assignment.

Computer Science - We are now into Visual Basic ... four new simple problems we hope to have done by Friday.

Selected Topics to BGTC tomorrow then starting our final Biology unit on Thursday with lots of CATS and ACT review.  If you do not have your permission slip tomorrow be prepared to stay at school ... remember a small amount of $ for lunch.

A beautiful fall day today ... hope you all got outside to enjoy it ... my cover crops have germinated ... especially the Austrian Winter Peas.  I worked nine hives today preparing the bees for winter ... all nine colonies looked strong with lots of honey stored for the winter.  The bees (Buckfast) I brought back from Texas (RWeaver Bees) have done really well.  Subsoiled some places where I will plant trees and blackberry plants next spring.