Amino Acids continued!

It's been a busy few weeks! I've subbed half of the week days in the past 2 weeks, and worked ~30 hours at Blockbuster each week. They've told us that our store is closing, and we've had to convert the store over to liquidation mode. It's utter chaos. Confusion abound! But I figured I'd take my one day off in the foreseeable future to continue in the vein of the last post.

Since Valentine's day has just passed, and I'm still *technically* single, I did what I do every year.....wait until the big boxes of chocolate go on sale, and buy myself some!

Why do I mention this?

Well I noticed that the inside looks eerily like what I was about to teach....Tertiary Structure!

My (almost completely demolished) box of chocolates

So Imagine this heart shaped container is a protein. And consider the squarish ones the beta-pleated sheets, and the roundish ones alpha-helixes. See how they kind of touch? They are all squished together to form the bigger whole. The little gold spaces in between are the interractions between our alpha helixes and beta pleated sheets! A.K.A. disulfide bonds!

Quaternary structure

Now imagine you go to buy yourself some clearance self-pity valentines chocolates. We all know how they're set up in the store. These hearts are  arranged so that they're sat up, with the points facing down, each snuggled into a base, lined up front to back. Lets call each of these individual heart boxes a sub-unit. (in technical speak, a polypeptide chain).

What do you get when you have an entire row of subunits?  If you work in retail like me, you often have to unpack these crates from the manufacturer, and they're wrapped in plastic wrap. So taking the plastic wrap around the subunits, all snug together, you get Quaternary structure! You've got a full display, the whole shebang, all parts have come together to form a beautiful mountain range of chocolate.

And there you go. You just built a whole protein from tiny alphabet-like pieces (aka amino acids).

An example of this whole aggregate structure is Hemoglobin. Hemoglobin consists of two kinds of polypeptide chains. It has alpha helixes, and a few non-helical segments connecting them. See all the curly alpha helixes above?




Now I don't have a whole heap of time to go into Nucleic Acids today, but I'll try to get to that soon. I'm subbing tomorrow, and then have work at the Block tomorrow, Sat, and Sun, so don't expect any miracles!

Until then,

Ms. Kat

Lipids, Proteins, and Amino Acids, OH MY! Part 1

Since each of these sub-headings of this section are not terminology-laden (or at least as much so as carbs) I decided to combine them.

Lipids

As far as the types of Lipids, we've got:

1. Fats

Well that's easy enough to remember. For those who can't seem to connect the two, I always think of someone who's gotten botox in their lips. They plump up and look really fat. FAT LIPS. For remembering the general structure of fats (a glycerol and 3 fatty acid chains) I like to thing of a ...

G======

|

|

|

This kind of makes the shape of an F. F for Fats.

2. Phospholipids
Breaking it down, we've got PHOSPHO and LIPID. Aren't scientists just SO clever?
To me, a phospholipid always looked like a guy smelling the amazing scent of bacon....which is fatty, thus falls under the context of lipids! (his head is the phosphate head, the wafting scent are the fatty acid tails)

3. Steroids

Who's seen fantastic 4?

Surprisingly, I have not. It's on my list, ok? Geeze just cause I work at a video store...

Anyway, here's Thing from Fantastic 4

Notice the shape of his arms. Geometric. Imagine him flexing. Kind of looks familiar. Please ignore my lacking art skills.

Anyway, that's how I remember steroids. Thing looks like he's been on steroids, his arms look like the classic 4 carbon ring structure, and hey....if you plop a rock in a glass of water, it's not going to dissolve! (steroids are not water-soluble)


Amino Acids
This is kind of a more hands on activity. For it, you'll need pipe cleaners (2 colors) and scissors. It would probably be most effective to put students into groups. Even though pipe cleaners are cheap, there may not be enough scissors to go around, and kids have a proficiency for using more than necessary.

Primary structure:
This is very easily understood by comparing the amino acids to the alphabet. Each AA is a letter, and can be combined  with other letters to form words (an AA).

Secondary Structure:
This is where the pipe cleaners come in. Take one color as the base(yellow in my example), and the second as the little hydrogen bonds/radical groups along the backbone (orange).

Take the base strand, and wrap little pieces of orange around it every inch or so.

Then grasp the end between your thumb and first finger like so

Then proceed to wrap the whole thing around your finger

The slip off of your finger and align the little orange side chains so they're perpendicular to the base chain. You now have your alpha helix! This gives the kids a good idea of WHY the Amino acids form this structure (the H-bonds, orange bits).

And for the beta pleated sheets do the same, only don't make a spiral, just bend it back and forth

TA DA that is secondary structure in nutshell.

It's getting rather late in the day, and I'm beginning to get famished, so I'll cut things off here. Part 2 will finish up amino acid structure and proteins.

Toodles!

Carbohydrates

One of the first  real subject-oriented competencies in my TExES prep book is 004-Structure and function of Carbohydrates, lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids.

Today, I'm just focusing on the Carbohydrates. These are the first big sciency-words that a lot of kids experience in HS Biology. Some of these terms are familiar. They've heard them before, but never truly knew what they meant, or how they fit into the scheme of things.

So I devised this nifty diagram to help clear up some of the cluster.

I'd probably start out with just writing the Carbohydrates header on the board, and discussing monomers and polymers. I'd tell them what they notice about the formula (CH2O)n. How do the numbers of atoms relate? There are 2 hydrogen atoms for each C and O.

From there, we'd start out with the smallest, the monosaccharides. I'd encourage them to come up with clever  ways to remember the 3. For me, it's "Glue a Fruit at a Gala." Then we'd move on to combining these monosaccharides into disaccharides. Again, they would be asked to come up with a familiar little saying to help them remember. All 3 have Glucose. For me, Maltose reminds me of my friend Malorie. She was skinny, despite eating so many sugary things, so a lot of Glucose (Glu + Glu). Lactose 'lacks' the Lu (Glu + Gal). Fructose....toss a Stir FRy (Glu + Suc). There's an endless number of possibilities. Maybe give them this as a homework assignment.

Then we'd go to the polysaccharides. I found it easier to break them up into plant and animal categories, each with one 'structure'(cellulose and chitin) and one 'energy storage' (glycogen and starch).

After this discussion, we'd break up into groups and I'd hand out a paper copy of the chart, and a page of these to each group (as well as scissors and a glue stick)

I'd lable each monosaccharide what it is (glu/fru/gala). Then, they would need to put these next to the appropriate label on the main diagram. To make the disaccharides, they'd need to combine the appropriate monosaccharides, and paste them together on the diagram.

This idea is still a work in progress. I may make it even more complicated, perhaps with a kind of treasure hunt around the class to scavenge the pieces instead of just giving them a paper to cut out. See? constant evolution and re-evaluation. That's what being a teacher is all about.

Well, that and actually...you know...teaching = )

Gracefully falling face first

Hello, blogosphere! My name is Katie. I'm a 24 year old pre-service Science teacher. Currently, I'm enrolled in a post-bac certification program, and will soon be certified to teach 8-12 life science in the state of Texas. I have only recently begun substitute teaching. I could go on and on about myself, but that's not what this blog is about.

The purpose of this blog is to brainstorm and share ideas on how to teach what can be a difficult and confusing subject to my future students (and others' students). I'm currently studying for my content area TExES test. I believe that, by creating lesson plans and devising games and activities for my students, I will learn the material even better myself.

I'm a busy gal. I work ~30 hours a week at Blockbuster as a Shift Leader (technically Assistant Manager without the pay or title). I substitute whenever called upon. Last semester I spent 2 days in and elementary resource class, half a day with 3rd and 4th grade music, and a day with a 1st grade class. 1st grade kind of traumatized me, and made me very firm in the stance that I only want to teach high school. This coming Monday, I've been asked to sub at the high school I graduated from, and I'm PSYCHED. I'm also taking 2 graduate-level classes which keep me busy reading and researching.

At any rate, I'll be attempting to post at least 1-2 nifty ideas/lesson plans a week. At that rate, I should be ready for my TExES by the time I finish this Spring Semester, or perhaps Summer I.

I look forward to comments/additions/substitutions/applications from anyone who stumbles upon this!

Peace and Love,
Kat