Investigations in Science 7 – March 22, 2019

Coming Up:

 Basic Genetics

 Punnett Squares

Dates:

 March 28 - Orchestra Festival

 March 29 - Mary Poppins School Play at 7:00 pm
 March 30 - Mary Poppins School Play at 7:00 pm
 March 31 - Mary Poppins School Play at 2:00 pm
 April 3 – Early Dismissal
 April 3 – End of Quarter 3
 April 4 – First Day of Quarter 4
 April 5 – Spring Fling
 April 12-13 – Band Trip
 April 14-16 – Bay Trip
 April 16 – Report Card Distribution

What we did this week:

Monday we reviewed for our assessment that was on Tuesday. We had our
assessment on sexual vs. asexual reproduction.
This week, we started by building our basic understanding of
genetics. Genetics is the study of how traits are inherited. Traits are determined
by genes. And each trait has different alleles, which are different forms of a
trait that give us specific information about the trait. Everyone has two alleles for
the trait, one from the mother and one from the father. Alleles that are stronger
than others are called dominant alleles. Weaker alleles are called
recessive. Recessive alleles will only be expressed (shown) if there are no
dominant alleles present (both alleles are recessive). For example, brown eyes are
a dominant trait and blue eyes is a recessive trait. Someone will only have blue
eyes if they have two recessive alleles.
This section is filled with a lot of vocabulary which we practice constantly in
class. Below is the list of vocabulary we have been working on while completing
practice problems and answering questions on heredity.
 Heterozygous: “hybrid,” two different alleles for a trait (Rr)
 Homozygous: “purebred,” two of the same alleles for a trait (RR or rr)
 Allele: Different forms of a gene; can be dominant or recessive; one letter
passed from a parent
 Dominant: this trait always shows up when an allele is present
 Recessive: this kind of trait can be hidden by a dominant allele

Thursday we participated in the 2nd Annual Asexual Reproduction Olympic

Games. The 4 events that each represented a different type of asexual
reproduction were:
 Puzzle Mania – Student put together a magnetic jigsaw puzzle, of a picture of
strawberries, on the board.
 Take 1 – Students pass a container through their group members and each
student has to take out 1 card that has a picture of the Amoeba Sisters on it.
 Lego Tower – Students have only 30 seconds to build the highest freestanding
tower with Legos.
 Board Puzzle – Students get a few magnetic letters that they have to
unscramble to make a word that is related to asexual reproduction.
Today, we took a class inventory on Google Forms of many easily visible traits,
such as presence of a widow’s peak, ability to roll their tongue, and presence of
dimples. We used this data to draw the conclusion that the dominant trait is not
always the most common trait. For example, it was more common to not have
dimples, which is the recessive form of the trait.

Have a great weekend!