Maggie Conrad's Elementary Science Methods Blog

 This week, we talked about mutation and what it is. Mutation is changes in genetic material. It can be caused by mutagens radiation, chemicals, and other infectious agents. Evolution and mutation can go hand in hand.   We did two different activities. The first one was called Preying on Beans. We acted like predators searching for prey with three different traits. The goal was to demonstrate the process of adaptation and selection. Our group used a spoon, a fork, and then two knives. We had thirty seconds to collect as many beans as possible. We then counted each bean and figured out the percentage of beans that were left over. The person that had the least amount of prey(beans) died and then got to pick a new trait(utensil) to use. We ended with three forks and one spoon.   The final activity was a Peppered Moth Simulation. The goal was for it to simulate changes in moth population due to population and predation, and observe how species can change over time. ...

 This week we did a review of what we did in our class last week. We talked about cell to DNA, DNA structure, DNA to protein, and our baby lab. We shared our babies with the class. It was fun to see what their baby looked like and how different each one was. We also talked about the differences between DNA and RNA structure. DNA has a T and RNA has a U. We then moved into mutation. A mutation is a change in the cell's structure. This could be from deletion, insertion, substitution, and rearrangement. We also talked about codons which are a DNA and RNA sequence of three nucleotides that encode a particular amino acid.        For an activity, we did a mutation superhero worksheet. We saw how the different mutations affected Dr. Johnston. He was either normal, a supervillain, or a superhero. We discovered that mutations in DNA are both advantageous and disadvantageous. This is because depending on the mutation they can affect the chromosome structure positively or ...