Spring 2007 Discussion Area & Photos

International School Nido de Aguilas Santiago, Chile

Greetings from the International School Nido de Aguilas; a beautiful school located in Santiago, Chile (South America for those who think Chile is some kind of spice).
We consider our school cool and different. We have a variety of nationalities in this school since people from all over the world come here because of the prestige this school has gained. The Middle School program at our school is fun and efficient. It's made up of core classes (Language Arts, Math, Social Studies, Science and Spanish) as well as encore courses such as Physical Education and artistic classes (Art, Drama, Band, Choir, etc.). The main language spoken at this school is English but it still has reinforcement classes for the Non-English or Non-Spanish speaking students.
Another great thing our school offers is a Kermess every November. It consists of getting the whole school together on a Saturday to enjoy the food and experience the customs of different countries.
These and other reasons make Nido de Aguilas a really special school. Its diversity and variety in nationalities makes our student population tolerant of other lifestyles.

Sincerely,
Block A Science

Vickery Middle School, Georgia, USA

Hola, como estan?
The life science 4th period class of Mrs. Speropoulos would like to share the excitement of the everyday American life of a 7th grader here in Cumming, Georgia. Our school is a co-ed school named Vickery Creek Middle School. Our school was established in 1998. We have about 1200 students. Our school day is based on a 3 day rotating schedule, A-B-C days. Our school is a little strict and we have lots of rules like dress code, no gum chewing, no passing notes, and no talking in class. It's easy to make friends at our school, mostly everybody is friendly. Everybody is different and unique in their own way. People are interested in many different things like sports, skateboarding, bmxing, shopping, and reading.

We have math, science, social studies, and language arts and we have connections (PE, art, band, chorus, health, technology, etc.). Our school day starts at 9am and ends at 4:15pm (very long ) In science we are studying biology (life science) which includes cells, biomes, taxonomy, symbiosis, and of course genetics.

The sports here are basketball, track, golf and football. There is a girls team for basketball (Lady Vipers) adn the boys team (The Vipers). Everyone at our school is very spirited when it comes to supporting our friends and classmates doing whatever they are interested in.

We have many clubs like Lego league, sign language, mathletes, yearbook, drama, science olympiad, knitting club, environmental club, warhammer, and many more.

Most people in our school have dominant traits, no suprise LOL
therefore we think the the dominant traits will be more common in the human population.

Sincerely, Ms. Speropoulos' Class-7B4

Hey!
Greetings from VCMS! Vickery Creek Middle School is a great school and most of the teachers are cool. We are the home of the Vipers, which is our school mascot. Our school colors are teal, silver, and black (although our 7th grade lockers are bright yellow! )

Anyways, you can come on down to the viper pit, where you can enjoy basketball or you can hike up the gravel road at the back of our school to watch a football (american) game. Woo hoo! Go Vipers Go!
There are other sports like golf, track and an ice hockey team. Our girls basketball team won the county championship as well as the boys and girls track team!

We have a lot of clubs at Vickery. We have drama, book, chess, lego league, science olympiad, knitting, guitar, environmental, sign language, computer programming, FISH, warhammer, and 4-H club.

We have afterschool activities like dances, theatre plays, chorus and band concerts, and sports games. We have many different fundraisers for Relay for Life and March of Dimes. We have hat days, pajama days, dances, and walk-a-thons.

Something we do afterschool and weekends is hang out with our friends, go to the mall, and go to the movies.

Our hypothesis is that the dominant and recessive alleles will be equal to each other in the human population.

Sincerely, Ms. Speropoulos' Class-7B5

Dear Fellow Scientists,

Greetings from Georgia! We are Mrs. Speropoulos 7th grade class from Vickery Creek Middle School or "the VCMS Vipers". Our school is located at W34.177692 latitude and N84.222138 longitude.

Our school is like any other, we have classes and connections or "specials". We have 5 academic classes and 2 connections all taught by different teachers. Our school is pushing 1,200 students and the boys to girls ration is about equal.

We are also involved in sports. The sports are basketball, american football, golf, track, and cheerleading. We do alot of school wide activities like school dances and fundraisers to raise money for cures.

Life in Cumming, Georgia is pretty cool. Our county, Forsyth, is the 5th fastest growing county in the entire United States! This means that everyday a new housing subdivision or stripmall pops up. Our county used to be rural farmland. There are so many changes that some people like it and others can't stand it.

We are very excited to be on this website. We have enjoyed reading everyone's letters. We hope your experiments go well and you have fun with them.

Our hypothesis is we think that the dominant traits are going to be more common in the human population.

Sincerely, Ms. Speropoulos' Class-7B1

Hey Ya'll Greetings from Vickery Creek Middle School!

We are in 7th grade and our school is located in Cumming, Georgia in the United States. Our school is a middle school that offers grades 6-8. We have several clubs and sports. The clubs include book club, FISH club, environmental, foreign language, and many other clubs. Our sports are basketball, girls and boys, cheerleading, american football, track & field, and a golf team. Only 7th and 8th graders can do sports but 6th graders can be team managers. We do not wear uniforms but we have a dress code. It basically says that we have to dress appropriately.

Each student of each grade must have 7 classes. That includes math, language arts, science, social studies, foreign language (french or spanish) and two connections classes. Our connections include chorus, band, PE, art, technology, computer literacy, and more.

Our hypothesisis that the dominant traits wil be most common in the human population.

Sincerely, Ms. Speropoulos' Class-7B7

Greetings Earthlings...we come in peace J/K!

We are 7th graders at Vickery Creek Middle School otherwise known as VCMS. Our school mascot is the viper and our school colors are teal, silver and black. We have just finished our track season and both our boys & girls track teams won the County Championship! Our 7th grade girls basketball team finished their season undefeated but our american football team wasn't as successful as we'd hoped.

We start our school year in the beginning of August and finish at the end of May. We have 5 core academic classes (math, language arts, science, social studies, and french or spanish). We also have 2 connection classes such as technology, art, chorus, band, health, journalism, or PE. Each of the grades 6,7,8 are all divided into 3 halls and each grade is divided into 3 teams. We are a part of team 7B. Our school has many fundraisers. We are a proud sponsor of the American Cancer Society (Relay for Life) and American Heart Association. We do many activities to raise money such as dodgeball tournaments, hat days, and pajama parade.

We are located in Cumming, Ga. A few things that Georgia is famous for are peanuts, peaches, Coca-Cola, and the brand new Georgia Aquarium.
The average 7th grader usually goes to movies with friends, hang out at the local YMCA, or go to the mall to shop.

Our class hypothesis is that dominant traits will be more common in the world.

Sincerely, Ms. Speropoulos' Class-7B6

Final Report

This is the first time we were introduced to the topic of genetics. This project gave us an opportunity to learn the concept in an interesting way.

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Our teacher divided us in 9 groups and we conducted the survey of various classes in our school. The survey was done systematically and at every step, the record was maintained. We were not familiar with some of the traits. It was really interesting to know about them and conduction of survey was a real fun.

It was really fascinating to know that our external makeup (phenotype) depends on our genes (genotype), which we receive from our parents. We found it really shocking that with the help of small genes an accurate picture of an individual can be made. According to our general observation of traits around us we expected (hypothesis) that recessive trait would be more prevalent and it proved true in most of the characteristics except earlobes, pinky and red-green color blindness. This has doubled our confidence and interests in the project.

DATA for RDPS, INDIA and ALL Schools, WORLD

We calculated percentages in MS-Excel and prepared chart for the same

CHART - RDPS, INDIA

PERCENTAGE- ALL PARTICIPANT SCHOOLS

 CHART- ALL PARTICIPANT SCHOOLS

For any dominant trait to represent itself, the genotype would be TT (Homozygous Dominant) or Tt (Heterozygous Dominant) For any recessive trait to represent itself, the genotype would be tt (Homozygous Recessive) According to the data, it seems that Dominant trait is not always common in population. We can see that in some traits like Normal color Vision (Dominant), Free Earlobes (Dominant), Bent Pinkies (Dominant) are more common, but in traits like without white forelock (Recessive), without Dimples (Recessive), Curved Thumb (Recessive), No mid digit hair (Recessive) are more common in population. The dominant trait is prevalent only in 3 of 7 traits surveyed. This proves that there is no relationship between how often a trait occurs and dominance. We had also checked the results of schools from same continent. For Example, Continent-Australia, Two participating countries – Australia, New Zealand, which shows that they don’t have similar results in all traits as we expected (hypothesis).

Our teacher arranged a special lecture from Senior Biology Teacher in our school for understanding of the concept, which was very informative. This project helped us to inculcate the habits like co-operation, workmanship and team spirit. It also helped us to think logically and scientifically. If we get a chance to perform such a valuable task again we would like to conduct survey in our community too. We would like to check more genetic features and body disorders associated with genes. Working on this project was an enjoyable experience and we are looking forward to participate in such projects in future too.

Thanks

Human Genetics Collaborative Project Group
Grade 8 Rukmini Devi Public School, Delhi, India