Lesson Materials from NSTA 2008: The Nature of Science: Bias in Data Analysis
11:00 AM-12:00 PM :: Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, Room 260

Download a copy of the SCALE Immersion Unit, Variation and Natural Selection. The lesson, introduced at NSTA in Boston (2008), is Lesson 1 of Step 2 from a 6-week unit, which features a sequence of lessons designed for teaching middle or high school students the concepts of variation and selection. The pdf file you can download here (8.4 mb) and use with your students, contains both student and teacher pages for the whole unit. The video that is referenced in the unit can be viewed on TeacherTube or YouTube.

More Activities about Genetics, Variation, Heredity, and Evolution

Genetics Made Easy with Fast Plants®

• How can things that look so different be the same?
• How can things that are the same look so different?
  
  
• Investigating Mendelian Genetics, a 15-page booklet (1.6 MB pdf)
• Variation and Fast Plants®
• Single gene inheritance models
  • Monohybrid
  • Dihybrid
  • Who’s the Father? monohybrid investigation
  • Who’s the Father? dihybrid investigation
  • Single gene inheritance computer simulations
• Quantitative inheritance models
  • Hairs

Inheritance Activities

Around the World with Brassicas - (80K PDF file)
Explore in depth the six most important species of Brassica, and what role they each play in feeding our world's population.

A Biological Riddle: How can things that look so different be the same? - (48K PDF file)
Answer that question by taking a trip to your local supermarket and purchasing vegetables such as Chinese cabbage, turnips and Pak choi (celery cabbage). By comparing these with the Rapid Cycling plants (Rbr) and breeding the vegetables with each other, learn what the interesting connection is between these very different looking vegetables.

Fast Plants® and Families - (76K PDF file)
Explore what it means to be in a family. Do the seeds in one pod have the same mother and father?

Getting a Handle on Variation - (124K PDF file)
What are some of the reasons for plant's biological variations? Explore these variations using your own Fast Plants® data and a frequency histogram.

Hairy's Inheritance - (88K PDF file)
Why do plants have hair on various parts of their anatomy? This is a question whose answer many scientists are still unsure of. Through observing and counting the hairs on their Fast Plants®, students will learn more about variation and inheritance, and perhaps raise interesting hypotheses of their own about this trait's underlying purpose.

Hairy's Inheritance: Selection, Variation, and Inheritance - (100K PDF file)
Published as a Carolina Tips article, this activity will guide students and teachers through the art of selection, hypothesize on the mode of inheritance and measure gain from selection using a easily observable trait on Fast Plants®, hairs.

Unraveling the Mysteries of Hairy's Inheritance - (32K PDF file)
Current research around the questions how are hairs on Fast Plants® Inherited. What if you cross a hairless Fast Plant with a hairy Fast Plant? Will the F1 be hairy or hairless? What about the F2?

Quantitative Variation, Selection, and Inheritance with Fast Plants® - (40K PDF file)
An Introduction to quantitative variation and Fast Plants®. Explore the concepts of heretability, continuous variation, and response to selection with the hairs on Fast Plants®.