Second Quarter Portfolio Reflection for Cells and Genetics Science.

I thought that overall the science class this semester was “aweesome”. Although cells and genetics is not my very favorite subject in science, Mr. Schneider made it surprisingly good. Now that I will be graduating from this class soon, when I look back at all the fun things we did this quarter I regret that I have to go.

My favorite thing we did so far was the cell project. We had to make a cell out of household things. Then we had to present our cells to the class. Inside the cell there had to be all of the microorganisms located in the normal cell. I made mine out of clay. The nucleus was a chocolate egg yolk half filled also with clay, and the nucleolus as a big ball bearing ball. The cytoplasm was clay, the endoplasmic Reticulum was thin yellow papers. The rest was more ball bearing and marbles.

This project taught me a lot about cells and their inner bodies. I also learned how to make projects like those without buying everything.

I would also like to mention how glad I am to be a scientific assistant. I get to help with all the science things that are going on, like helping set up the fish tanks, the vacuum dome, and also having advantages of many items in the storage room. Being able to do this greatly helped me make a new friend – Michael Fagan. He has taught me many things that I didn’t know before and helped become liked by all of the science teachers. I also like, although this is not the nicest thing, to sit in a teacher’s room while the teacher is not there and look at the people trying to get into the room and think “ha-ha, you cant get in and I can!”

I would like to thank Mr. Schneider for contributing so much extra time to aid in our class for extra items of fun and comfort. He not only has an overhead, but a computer screen projector, which allows us to present something while showing the pictures over the internet. He also made an entire website for the use of the students on different sicknesses. I used it a lot for my single gene disorder report, one of the most important reports of the quarter.

In the single gene disorder report we had to write about a specific disorder that occurred on only one gene in the DNA of a person. We had to describe what is known about that disorder, how to treat it, and even what chromosome it is located on. Then we had to present to the class our disorder, using some kind of poster or overhead transparency. I used the disorder called Marfan Syndrome, a disorder that causes cardiovascular, skeletal, ocular, as well as aortic problems. The poster was an overhead transparency with pictures of the aorta, the general length of body comparison, and the ocular lens positions. This was a little hard to do, since we didn’t quite have enough time on it, but it still turned out to be ok.

There is one last complaint that I wish to produce, and it is that to my opinion, Mr. Schneider is a little bit too ignorant when you ask him a question, so you have to re ask him three, or maybe even four times in a row. But I guess that is just a personality trait and cannot be dealt with.