Unit 5 Reflections: Protein Synthesis with Words

When I did my modeling workshop, one of our leaders had a great quote.  He said that his first period class deserves a refund every day.  It doesn't get much more true than that... especially for me today!

Examples of the cards to be created for the Protein Synthesis with Words activity.  Tip:  it takes a good hour to create and set up this activity.

After the debacle that was first block today, I was pretty well convinced that the Protein Synthesis with Words activity was a worthless piece of garbage.  Luckily, the activity got better as the day progressed.  My first block students are my only non-honors class, so I do have to "help" them along a little more than my honors classes, but I supposed I killed them with intended kindness today.  We reviewed the differences between the nitrogenous bases in DNA and RNA, we practiced matching the complementing bases, we read through the activity together, I assigned roles, and I even modeled how to do sentence #1 for the class.

...and then the proverbial shite hit the fan.

They couldn't figure out anything.  They were making mistakes.  They were yelling at each other for messing up.  Only a couple groups were able to "synthesize" any protein sentences.  We all left frustrated and never even got to white board or discuss the lab.

So next block, I decided not to tell those students much of anything to see if that worked better.  We still reviewed the nitrogenous bases of DNA and RNA and how to match complementing bases, we still read the instructions together, I still assigned roles... and that was it.  They were all able to figure it out on their own.  The activity went brilliantly the rest of the day.

After about 30-45 minutes of "decoding" the sentences, I had everyone stop where they were.  I gave them the correct answers, since quite a few groups had at least one sentence they were stuck on.  I had them create white boards with a verbal and diagram explanation of how proteins are synthesized. (I forgot pictures!)  And I believe they all walked away with a conclusion than DNA in the nucleus is turned into RNA and used to assemble proteins in the ribosomes with the anticodons determining the amino acid sequence.  I did not introduce the words "transcription" or "translation" yet.  Looking ahead at the lesson plan, I kind of wish I had at least introduced the concepts of mRNA, tRNA, and rRNA, but we simply ran out of time.

Tomorrow, we will be doing a WebQuest on Protein Synthesis to learn the details of Transcription and Translation and create our "notes" (model).

I'm not quite sure how much I'll revisit the activity with my first block... I may or may not try to have them whiteboard their conclusions.

When I do this activity again, and I will, I definitely will remember to back off and let them figure it out on their own...