Week 6

 What did you learn this week?

This week in lab I learned more about flower dissection and the parts of a flower. I learned that there are female and male parts of a flower- female parts being pistil, stigma, style, and ovary. The male parts are stamen, anther and filament. We also did an activity that helped us learn more about sea turtles and the dangers that threaten their survival. I learned about certain dangers that sea turtles encounter such as being eaten by sharks or raccoons eating sea turtle eggs, but I also learned how humans are a great threat to sea turtle survival as well. I also learned that sea turtles only have about a .01% chance of survival, which is why female sea turtles lay so many eggs at once. This week in lecture we also started learning about genetics. I learned more about DNA vs RNA, and how to differentiate between the two. I also learned more about the difference between genotypes- the combination of alleles that are possessed for a specific gene, and phenotypes- observable traits resulting from the expression of genes.   

Are you able to relate what you learned to what you already knew? 

I already knew that humans were a great threat to sea turtle survival for reasons such as being run over by cars, damaging the ocean with trash, and polluting their environment in general. I was able to relate this knowledge that I had about the harm humans cause to sea turtles to what I learned this week about them. It makes sense to me now why on average sea turtles lay about 110 eggs, because I learned that only about 1 in every 1,000 sea turtles survive to adulthood. If sea turtles were to only lay a few eggs at a time, there would be an abundantly smaller number of them alive today. 

How can you apply what you've learned to your teaching in the future? 

I plan on using a similar activity for the sea turtle activity that we did in class for my future class. I think it was a great way to get students involved and help them learn more about dangers to sea turtles, as well as ways that they survive. I think this would be a good activity to do for any animal that faces endangerment or has a low survival rate, because it allows students to understand all the dangers that they face in life. I would also want to do something similar to the flower growing process that we have been working on in class. Although our flower did not properly bloom, it was a good learning experience to figure out what went wrong and how we can correct our mistakes. Again, I would utilize this in my future class because it allows students to be hands on, make mistakes, correct them, and watch the process of their flower growing.