TSOTS Assignment #6: How Does Your Garden Grow?

Now it's time to put some of your recently acquired science skills and knowledge into practice.

Your first step today should be to visit your plants in the garden. Try to find your group's plants. If you can't, don't worry--the most important thing to do is to notice the changes all of the plants have experienced. Snap a few pictures with your phone's (or other device's) camera and then return to the classroom. Briefly discuss your observations with your group and then proceed to answer the following questions in a post titled "How Does Your Garden Grow?".

1. How is your plant (or any plants in our garden, for that matter) getting bigger and adding biomass? Your explanation should correctly use the terms and concepts of cell division (mitosis), photosynthesis, and cellular respiration.
2. Phosphoglycerate kinase (PKG) and ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (Rubisco) are two important enzymes used in photosynthesis. Describe how plants in the garden would make enzymes like these if a signal was sent to the nucleus of a leaf mesophyll cell to produce more of one of these enzymes. (Hint: enzymes belong to which category of biomolecule?)

Be sure to talk with your group members and other classmates about the questions as you attempt to compose your responses--together you should be able to come up with some very thoughtful explanations.



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TSOTS Assignment #5: Seed Stories, Semester 1

Now it's time to sit back for a few moments and ruminate on what you have done and experienced so far this year through doing The Story of the Seed project. What have you learned? What surprised or amazed you? What made you laugh? What made you pause and think a little deeper? What was frustrating about this project? Take five minutes to talk about it with your teammates. Listen carefully to each person's reflections on what the project has been like for him or her. What questions do you have about things you observed or experienced in the garden? OK, now, guess what? You are going to write about the experiences of one of your classmates--someone who was not on your team! Find someone from another group and work closely with that other person to summarize his/her answers to the questions above in a short paragraph that you will post under your name. Your post title should include that other person's name (e.g., "John's Seed Story"). Happy interviewing!



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