Wednesday, August 21, 2024

TSOTS Assignment #1: My Bio

 Before you do anything else with your individual biology website today, make sure you verify that it was set up correctly per Mr. Bursch's instructions. If there are any issues you must resolve those FIRST.


Once you have have verified that your site was set up correctly, you will complete your first official assignment for The Story of the Seed project--yes, that means this one is for points! By Monday, you'll need to publish a simple bio about yourself on your The Story of the Seed page of your individual biology website. In your post, please include responses to the following questions:

- What is your name? In what places have you lived (city and state is enough)?
- Have you ever gardened or grown food before? What did you grow and what do you remember about the experience?
- Talk about a person or people in your life who you think know a lot about gardening, farming, horticulture, plants, and/or making food from scratch. Who is this person? What is their relationship to you?


EXAMPLE I

My name is Joe Green. I am originally from Waukesha, Wisconsin. I moved here in 2002 with my mom and older sister. My Grandparents still live in Wisconsin and sometimes we get to go back and visit them in the summer.

I haven't really gardened that much, but sometimes I help my mom with her rose plants. I don't really cook that much, but I like to watch my sister cook and ask her about the ingredients she puts in the food she is making. She's a pretty good cook, but not as good as my grandma. My grandma and grandpa have a huge garden back in Wisconsin and my grandma makes pickles from the cucumbers she grows in the summer. They're tasty, but my favorite thing is pickled watermelon. I know it sounds gross, but it is so good! Whenever we go back I always spend some time helping my grandpa out in the garden. I don't really know what all of the plants are or how he gets them to grow so big, but it's cool to learn about them. Maybe after this project is over I will know a little more about some of these plants like kohlrabi.

EXAMPLE II 
I'm Marisol Martinez and I am from Salinas, CA. My grandmother, my dad, and his brother moved to San Jose in 2007. I have family in Salinas, Watsonville, Hollister and Mexico.

I cook many of the meals at home so I know how to cook. I learned most of what I know from my grandmother. She grew up in Tamaulipas, Mexico. My favorite thing to make that I learned from her is mole de olla con lentejas. I don't know exactly how to say it in English, but one of the ingredients is little seeds that kind of look like tiny beans. My grandmother probably knows the most about food and cooking of all of my closest relatives. I like coliflor, but my group is growing brussel sprouts. I like gardening. In my third grade class we had a garden and I planted carrots and we got to eat them at the end of the year. They were really sweet and very orange in the middle.




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Tuesday, August 8, 2023

Welcome to the Story of the Seed!

The Story of the Seed is a yearlong project where students follow the life of a domesticated plant from seed to seed. The project was to designed to connect to, be threaded through, and tie together all of the eight units of Mr. Bursch’s secondary-level introductory life science class (Biology in the Dynamic Earth) at Willow Glen High School. Students in this course are assigned by the teacher to project working groups within the first two weeks of the school year. Each group receives seeds of one particular cultivar of Brassica oleracea (examples of common Brassica oleracea representatives are broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage). The seeds are germinated during the first experiment of the year, after which the students place all sprouted seeds into growing trays or small pots. These trays and pots are placed under grow lights to grow larger before transplanting out into one of the raised beds in the school’s main garden. After selecting and transplanting the strongest and healthiest ones of their plants into the garden, the students in each group closely monitor the growth and development of their young plants and follow them (hopefully) all the way to the flowering and fruiting stages of the plant’s life cycle. Throughout the project students ask and answer their own questions as well as those posed by the teacher, perform independent research, make predictions, write and refine hypotheses, make careful measurements, take photographs, record and analyze data, draw conclusions, and maintain a blog where they present all of the former.

Monday, August 7, 2023

Hot Cheetos Ain't Got Nothin' on Me!


Yeah baby! You know you're getting hungry!

Ah... Girl look at that broccoli, Ah... Girl look at that broccoli, Ah... Girl look at that broccoli,

I'm tasty and you know it!