Brain Day!

You are probably wondering what it means...brain day. Well, here are a few pictures of my 9th grade anatomy students dissecting sheep brains. They had a lot of fun and were able to see many things like the corpus callosum, the arbor vitae, and the cerebrum vs. the cerebellum. If you don't know what these things are, just stop one of my anatomy students in the hallway and ask them.

Enjoy!

...and the student has surpassed the teacher!

I have been teaching here for 14 years. During these years I have tried hard to instill in my students the desire to be the best they can be. Today I am beginning to see many of my students become great and wonderful things.

These are two of my past students who have come into my life once again. One is going to be the new Head master here at Meridian and the other is a Sophomore at Dartmoth medical school.

It made me think...my students are surpassing me. How do I feel? Absolutely wonderful!

Being a teacher is very much like being a parent, especially when you open up your heart to your students. Your love for them increases each year and your desire truly is to see them succeed and become everything they can. To reach their potential, or at least to begin to and to live their dreams.

I am lucky enough to be a part of this. So, how do I feel working for someone who once sat in my room learning from me. How do I feel learning from them? Great! If I can only claim to be a small influence in their lives, then all this sacrifice is worth every minute.

Thanks to all my students who keep in touch. I am proud of each and every one of you. Live your dreams and find joy in your lives, that is the greatest thing you could ever do for me.

Balloon Rockets

This is a typical end of the day for Mrs. Slade.... So tired! Not really everyday, but sometimes.

Today is 7th grade we made balloon rockets and then calculated the velocity of differently weighted balloons. Such Fun! ENJOY!

Tootsie Pop's

I had two students who became rather bored while waiting for the judging of the science fair. During this time they decided to use the time to create and do another one.

Title -- Tootsie Pops! Takin' a lickin'

Hypothesis -- We presumed that the time taken to reach the center of a tootsie pop would be 1 hour.

Experiment: We (Matthew and Jordan) each took a standard build tootsie pop, and commenced the licking process. Patrick acted as teh lick tallier. WE synchromized our licks, and licked our tootsie centers out.

Reality: It took 550 licks to reach the center of a tootsie pop

Paper...

As we watched the other science fair projects commence, the question popped into our heads...."Mr. Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a Tootsie pop?".

'How many licks indeed?' We asked. And so we were off! ....

End....

It was a long, hard, and tiring process; but after about fifteen minutes, we struck the El Dorado that we had been searching for...550 licks it took, but we hit not the Ag treasure that the Spanish Conquistadors quested for, but that of a tootsie roll. We had succeeded, and determined that, Mr Owl, it indeed takes 550 licks to reach the Tootsie Roll center.

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.