Only teachers today at school ...

Today was an inservice work day at school.

We worked on unit plans and for me lots of work on Keynote presentations for the new AP Bio curriculum ... each presentation takes a minimum of 2-3 hours to prepare but, you only have to generate them once.  I have done several this semester.

Also, I worked on Bio Math today and generated sample problems students might see on the 2013 AP Bio Exam.

My sister and nephew are down tonight before going to Belmont University tomorrow to visit their pharmacy school.

Rained all day but, tomorrow we will get back to work ... and we should see some sunshine!

To Danville, Cold Night and Fish

Friday Mr Bryn and I took 34 students to Danville for an AP Review session at Danville HS.  We left school early and toured the National Fish Hatchery at Wolf Creek Dam in Russell County.  We camped at Pioneer Playhouse in Danville.  It was a chilly night and hard to get everyone in their tents and they were up way too early ... heaven forbid they would forego a shower (not Peace Corps material!) ... We did get our sessions in for AP Biology and AP Environmental Science.  In AP Biology ... replication, transcription, translation, genetics, endocrine signaling and the immune system.

Monday we do have students but a PD ...  A day off to review AP Biology!

Today I feed our bees after church ... sugar water in ziplock bags with slits cut in them for the bees to feed.  It was a warm but cloudy day ...

Pictures from the fishery below ... they had a pet skunk that was very fat!

Speciation and physics ... illinois bundleflower

Selected Topics started our physics unit with some work on PhET simulations from the University of Colorado.  Today we worked through the simulations Projectile Motion and Springs / Masses.  Tomorrow, we will finish these simulations and data collection in addition, we will create our solar system model outside if sunny.

http://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulations/category/new



In AP Biology, we went over discussion questions in Chapter 24 - Speciation.  We also did several Hardy - Weinberg calculations and took a review quiz.  Tomorrow ... more review or to the National Fishery in Russell County.

Remember, students do not have school on Monday but, our faculty does.

Starting next Friday morning, we are going to have Breakfast Club starting at 6:45 AM ... AP Review on steroids!

We are planting some of our wildflower seeds at school now ... tomorrow, common milkweed and illinois bundleflower.  This is part of our Patriot Pollinator Project for Allen County this Spring.

Hardy-Weinberg problems and more ...

Selected Topics in Science today had their final test in Astronomy.  Tomorrow we will build our solar system model outside and then off to Physics for a few weeks ...

In AP Biology we had a review quiz, updated our review cheat sheet, went over some concepts in evolution and worked through some Hardy-Weinberg problems.  Tomorrow, evolution and population genetics continues.

This weekend many of the AP Science students will be going to Danville for an AP review session.  We will leave on Friday, going to the Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery in Russell County.  On Saturday we will be at Danville HS for the review sessions.

http://www.fws.gov/wolfcreek/

Wolf Creek National Fish Hatchery Raceway Cam

wcnfh.com/cam1.php

Evolution and Population Genetics ...

Today was a testing day at school ... juniors taking a real ACT in a state of Kentucky event and sophomores taking a practice ACT ... freshmen an end of course practice test ... test, test, test ...

My AP Biology students did meet ... we checked our culture plates for bacteria growth over last night.  Results were better than expected with every group getting some transformations.  This lab write-up is due on Thursday.  We started our study of evolution which will continue tomorrow ... How populations change genetically over time.  Also, we introduced the Hardy-Weinberg equations and conditions.  More H-W problems tomorrow.

Selected Topics did not meet today because of testing.

Snowing some this evening ... but, a warmup is on the way the rest of the week.

Less than 70 days until the AP Biology test ...

ACT tomorrow ... Transformation Lab picts ...

In Selected Topics today, we finished up some odds and ends in Astronomy ... HR diagrams and five constellations you should know.  We will not have class tomorrow because of the ACT test.

We had our bacterial transformation lab today (pGreen).  In this lab, students used a procedure that included a heat shock to transform bacteria with a plasmid containing a bioluminescence gene and an ampicillin resistance gene.  We are allowing our culture plates to incubate for 24 hours at 37 degrees.  We will analyze our results tomorrow.

Hannah and I took a walk at the Barren Lake Lodge 2.5 hiking trail this evening ...

Picts from the lab today ...

Snow and clover seed ...

On Friday at school, we had school-wide ACT prep second block for juniors so I missed my Selected Topics Class.  I was one of the three science teachers doing ACT science review ... types of questions and format with some sample questions.

In AP Biology, we tallied up our fly lab data before moving on to gene regulation ... lac and trp operon, eukaryotic regulation and more.  We have sample MC questions for Monday and we are going to start quizzes to force students to review ... it is a long haul on content and labs for a single semester.  We have our bacterial transformation lab scheduled for Monday.  My juniors in fourth block missed half the class for at review award ... we pressed on without them.

Snowed last night so I got up early and walked on some clover seed on our turnip patch and elsewhere.  I also walked put some grass seed on our lawn.  Lots of birds at our feeders all day ... goldfinches, cardinals, juncos, sparrows, chickadees, red-bellied woodpeckers and many more!

John and Claire in for the weekend and Hannah is on her way down from Ann Arbor for a few days ... her Spring Break is next week.  Snow this morning in our backyard below as I fed our birds.