Translation

when one translates they convert the meaning of one language into another. The same occurs in your cells when you produce proteins needed for the function of the cell. The language of mRNA must be converted into the language of amino acids. The language of mRNA involves four letters A,C, U, and G. The language of proteins involves twenty amino acids. In order to convert his language you need to have a three letter code of mRNA nucleotides for each amino acid. These are pictures of the process of translation acted out by my wonderful juniors. I find it amazing how you can convince them to stick things on their forhead and look a little silly instead of taking notes and/or listening to a lecture given by Mrs. Slade.

Each student represented a tRNA molecule. This is the molecule responsible for the actual translation process. On the board the the three sites of the ribosome (A,P, and E) . The long strand of tape with letters on it represent the mRNA molecule. This was made from a code in DNA called a gene. Each gene codes for a single polypeptide chain. Well enough said...Enjoy the pictures.

I bet you didn't know that one way of helping kids understand the concept of a half life is by using pennies. But you can...first you take 100 pennies and place them in a bag. Spill the pennies out and take out all the heads. (close to half--or it should be...this also helps students realize that not everything always works out perfectly).

Then you take those out..place the remainder in the bag and do it again and again until you run out of pennies. Of course you are keeping track of how many heads you remove each time. The kids see that, WOW, almost always 1/2 of what you have.

So cool...enjoy the pictures of your cute kids.

We're Back!

It has taken me a while to get back into the swing of things here at Meridian. I got used to sleeping in and taking my time...so, blogging hasn't gotten done....until today.

Here are two of my classes. The second group is Physical Science building their polymers out of marshmallows. There is no more fun way to learn the way atoms are built to make molecules than actually using marshmallows and toothpicks to show it. They had a great time and were busy looking in advanced science books to understand them better and find out how two monomers combined to form a large polymer. Go 7th graders.

The first picture is my Anatomy class taking their dreaded bone test. It is a 50 question test where all I do is point to bones (or bumps on bones, or holes in bones, or parts of bones) and they have to write the name...all from memory. The interesting thing is this is one of my best exams (score wise) every year. They dread it but study so hard. I love it.