Unpacked Content
Scientific and Engineering Practices
Obtaining, Evaluating, and Communicating Information
Crosscutting Concepts
Cause and Effect
Knowledge
Students know:
- Through technologies, humans have the capacity to influence certain characteristics of organisms.
- One can choose desired parental traits determined by genes, which are then passed to offspring.
Skills
Students are able to:
- Gather information about multiple technologies that have changed the way humans influence the inheritance and/or appearance of desired traits in organisms.
- Use multiple appropriate and reliable sources of information for investigating each technology.
- Assess the credibility, accuracy, and possible bias of each publication and method used in the information they gather.
- Use their knowledge of artificial selection and additional sources to describe how the information they gather is or is not supported by evidence.
- Synthesize the information from multiple sources to provide examples of how technologies have changed the ways that humans are able to influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.
- Use the information to identify and describe how a better understanding of cause-and-effect relationships in how traits occur in organisms has led to advances in technology that provide a higher probability of being able to influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.
Understanding
Students understand that:
- Cause-and-effect relationships in how traits occur in organisms has led to advances in technology that provide a higher probability of being able to influence the inheritance of desired traits in organisms.
Vocabulary
- Technology (e.g., hand pollination, selective breeding, genetic engineering, genetic modification, gene therapy)
- Inheritance
- Traits
- Synthesize
- Bias
- Credibility
- Accuracy
- Probability
