Semester Two Science Reflection

Collaboration

In Science a lot of the times we work with our desk partner for assignments such as for Levers and Newtons. In this assignment, we started off with no idea whatsoever what levers and newtons were, and therefore needed to work together with people of different personalities to find out what it was with the resources our teacher gave us. At first, we started off independently doing our own research and later on shared our notes and discussed which formula or method in finding out newtons on levers was best etc for we had different spectrums of where we got our information and what we preferred. We then both together looked at some practice questions and worked with levers to answer each other's question. This is a very important lesson for working together with people will always be incorporated into your life.  You have to learn in dealing with arguments, understanding other people's' perspectives, being patient, going at the same pace helping others even though you fully understand it, and sharing materials.

Cultural Competence and Character

n Science, we had a cow eye dissection assignment. One of my table group members due to religion and spiritual beliefs couldn’t touch the eye. This meant that the other table members had to do more work, and obviously, we didn’t want to have more work loaded on us for we also didn’t feel that comfortable touching a cow’s eye. But we had to understand that she didn’t have a choice and it was her background which we couldn’t force to change. Even if the rest of my group members didn’t have a spiritual background that didn't allow them to touch the cow many were afraid, therefore even though I myself was grossed out did most of the cutting because I knew my character was someone who would put myself forth for my friends. I feel this was one of the little projects that made me think about cultural competence and I'm glad I had this experience for positive attitudes towards cultural differences and gaining knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews is very important especially in the future. I'll meet various people all around the world so I'm glad I got this experience. This assignment also showed people what characteristics I had.

Creativity and Communication

Our most recent assignment was mousetrap cars and I have to say this might be one of my favorite projects for it wasn’t teacher-led, but we had three classes to work with our partner to make a mousetrap car independently. Me and my partner right away drafted mousetrap cars using our creativity to create different shapes and methods. We drafted many shapes where we could use the least amount of products and different types due to weight such as wood, sticks, and plastic, or using hot glue instead of nails or tape for it would add the least weight and be the most secure. I’m glad me and my partner both liked talking for we worked very well communicating with each other. This was really important for we had a limited amount of supply and time so we didn't want to be on different pages messing up. During this assignment, we also had much dangerous equipment out such as drills and saws so we needed to remind each other to be careful.

Critical Thinking

In this activity we had to find  DNA fingerprint connections between possible parents and their children. We used critical thinking to narrow down and cross out the non possible matches with parents. We did this by their possible alleles for blood type, and comparing the children's DNA fingerprints to the parents.