Sunday, February 28, 2010

The Fisher and the Little Fish- Literature Fables

I think the maxim of The Fisher and the Little Fish is that you should take any opportunity that you get, even if its not as important as you want it to be. For instance, if you are searching for a job in teaching, and the only opportunity you get is teaching at a day camp, you should take it. In time, this job will turn out to be more important, and you will learn to love it. As in the story, the fisher did not want to give up the small fish because he may never find another fish during this time. All in all, whenever you receive a chance to participate in an activity that you thoroughly enjoy, take it, because others may die for the opportunity that you have.

Monday, February 22, 2010

The Crow and the Pitcher- Literature

I think that the maxim of this story is that if you work hard, it always pays off and if you struggle now, it will be easy in the future. However, if you take the easy way out now, you will struggle in the future.

The Fox and the Goat- Literature

I believe that the moral or maxim of the short story is that you should not always trust what you hear. There are many guile people in the world and you should never let them control you. Every individual should be assertive and do what they think is right.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Science- Ask a Genteticist

Out of all the responses that I read, I learned many new things. However, the most fascinating fact I discovered was how close humans are to chimps and apes. To begin with, I already knew that humans and chimps were cousins and that humans started out as chimp like creatures called homo sapiens. But when I read the information by the Stanford University students, I found out that we have a similar amount of chromosomes; humans have 46 and chimps have 48. In addition, it was surprising to me that our genomes were only 1.2 % different. Moreover, another thing I learned was that a human chromosome is made up of two chimp chromosomes. This shows that sometime, 5 million years ago that humans and chimps were the same organisms. But as time went on, both organisms started to drift apart and that was the process of evolution. All in all, these responses taught me many facts about chromosomes and DNA, including how much humans and chimps/apes are alike.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Literature- Wooden Bowls Response

After reading the story the Wooden Bowls, I think the lesson it teaches is to always respect show homage towards your family. In addition, you should always think before you act. What you do can really hurt someone, just like when the grandfathers' feelings were hurt when his family isolated him from the dinner table. To support, when the father asked the son what was he doing with the scraps of wood, the son said that he is making a wooden bowl for him when he gets old. As a result, the father was speechless and immediately let grandfather sit with them again.

Moreover, this moral relates to C.A.R.E.S in many ways. First of all, you need to show empathy to your peers and understand how they feel when you say something rude. In addition, self control is defiantly an important trait to this story. You need to be able to show respect to your elders and to your family for all that they have done for you. Each and every day you should think about all the things that you have and who/how you received it. No matter how upset or annoyed you are with them, just remember that you are here because of them.

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Science- Current Event Article (2nd post)

This article is called Hammerhead Sharks Have "Human" Vision. In this article, students from Florida Atlantic University discover that Hammerhead sharks have three times better eye sight than Blacknose and Lemon sharks. To begin with, these students take three different species of sharks from three different parts of the world. A scalloped hammerhead from Hawaii, a bonnethead from Florida, and a winghead shark from Australia. When they took these hammerheads to the lab, they recorded the electric activity happening in their eyes. The results were that their vision was three times higher that other sharks. However, hammerheads did have a blind spot. Since their eyes are so far apart, they cannot see something directly in front of them; therefore it is hard to catch their prey.



Moreover, when I read this article, it fascinated me to know that hammerheads have vision similar to humans. In addition, I thought that it was something out of the blue that these students discovered. I never really thought that there would be any marine animal that had a vision close to humans. All in all, I strongly believe that this was a very interesting article and I learned many suprising new facts because of it.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Science- Class Reponse

During the first trimester, our science class has done many interesting labs and activities. However, my favorite one would be dissecting the owl pellets. To begin with, this is the first lab that I have done that involves with dissecting an animal. This was a great experience dealing with bones and fur of other animals. Even though it was gross taking apart throw-up, I was fascinated by the unique feature of owls.

In addition, I have learning many facts about owls and the way they survive. First off, I learned what and owl pellet was. Referring back to the reading passage on owl pellets, a pellet is a mass of bone, teeth, hair, and feathers of the animals the owl ate. Owls eat in the evening and produce a pellet about 20 hours after their meal. Another thing that I learned about owls is that they have no teeth. All this time, I thought that owls have teeth. But during this activity, I discovered they make pellets instead. A third fact that I uncovered is how the owls' body works. Specifically, since the owl cannot chew its food, the stomachs work very hard from separating waste from meat. There are two main stomachs in an owls body, the glandular stomach and the gizzard. To support, in the glandular stomach, it produces acids that begging the digestion process. In the gizzard, it serves as a filter, holding back all bones, teeth, and fur.

In conclusion, doing the owl pellet activity was a great experience for me. I was able to perform my first dissection and see what it was like. In addition, I learned many new things about owls and the safety rules of dissecting. All in all, I hope that I do something similar to this activity in the future trimesters.