Investigations in Science 7 – April 6, 2018

Announcements:
The end of quarter 3 is on Monday, April 9th. Please be sure to check grades on
the Portal and have your child turn in any missing work on Monday.

Graded Assignments Turned in this week:

 Snaproduction (Summative and final due date is Monday)
 Reproduction Review Sheet
 Reproduction Assessment
 True Gene-ius Questions

Coming Up:
Topics:
 Chromosomes and Genes
 Basic Genetics – Punnett Squares

Dates:
 April 9-End of 3rd Quarter
 April 25 - SMOB
 April 26 – Take Your Child to Work Day
 April 26-28 – Band Trip to Tennessee
 May 1-3 – PARCC ELA
 May 4 – Roadrunner Night
 May 8-10 – PARCC Math
 May 18 – 7th Grade Lock In from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.
 May 23-25 – Bay Trip
 June 11 – Fun Day
 June 15 – Last Day of School (change from original calendar due to “snow”
days)

What we did this week:

 This week, we have been creating a Snapchat story of one of the types of
asexual reproduction. This will be a summative grade. The final due date for this
assignment will be on Monday but a number of students have already turned in
their assignment.
Then we read an article on True Gene-ius’. Students learned about Gregor
Mendel and his contributions to genetics. Students completed a reading
comprehension sheet while reading.
Thursday we had our assessment on sexual vs. asexual reproduction. Grades
will on this quarter’s grade.
Today, 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

Have a great weekend!