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Next Generation Science Standards - Activity LIsting

Many of our activities for helping middle school and high school students learn life sciences are aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS; http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards). The following listing provides brief descriptions of our NGSS-related resources. The tables described in the first item below summarize the alignment of our activities with NGSS Disciplinary Core Ideas and Performance Expectations. These tables also summarize how each of these activities engages students in Scientific Practices and provides the opportunity to discuss Crosscutting Concepts. The Teacher Notes for each activity provide additional information concerning alignment with the Next Generation Science Standards.

Introduction to Proteins and DNA

The Teacher Notes present a sequence of activities that will help students understand the basic structure and function of proteins and DNA.

To understand how genes influence our characteristics, students learn that different versions of a protein can result in different characteristics, and a gene in the DNA determines which version of a protein is synthesized by a person’s cells.

This information is conveyed through a PowerPoint with a sequence of discussion questions and videos, a Student Handout, and an optional hands-on learning activity. This sequence can be used in an introductory unit on biological molecules or to introduce a unit on molecular biology.

Levels of Organization in Biology

This activity uses the example of a flock of pelicans in flight to illustrate how analysis at multiple levels of organization enhances our understanding of a biological phenomenon.

Through an interactive whole-class discussion of PowerPoint slides, students learn about the multiple levels of organization in biology, as well as reductionism and emergent properties.

To reinforce these concepts, students answer the questions in a Student Handout and discuss their answers in additional whole class discussions.

Meiosis and Fertilization – Understanding How Genes Are Inherited

In this hands-on, minds-on activity, students use model chromosomes and answer analysis and discussion questions to learn about the processes of meiosis and fertilization.

Students first analyze how the processes of meiosis and fertilization result in the alternation between diploid and haploid cells in the human lifecycle. To learn how meiosis produces genetically diverse gametes, students analyze the results of crossing over and independent assortment.

As they model meiosis and fertilization, students follow the alleles of a human gene from the parents' body cells through gametes to zygotes.They learn how the outcomes of meiosis and fertilization can be represented in a Punnett square.

A final brief section contrasts sexual reproduction with asexual reproduction.

This activity can be used to introduce meiosis and fertilization or to review these processes. 
(NGSS)

Download Student Handout: PDF format or Word format

Download Teacher Preparation Notes: PDF format or Word format

Mitosis and the Cell Cycle - How a Single Cell Develops into the Trillions of Cells in a Human Body

Cell cycle producing daughter cellsIn this hands-on, minds-on activity, students use model chromosomes and answer analysis and discussion questions to learn how the cell cycle produces genetically identical daughter cells.

Students learn how DNA replication and mitosis ensure that each new cell gets a complete set of chromosomes with a complete set of genes.Students learn why each cell needs a complete set of genes and how genes influence phenotypic characteristics.

To understand how a single cell (the fertilized egg) develops into the trillions of cells in a human body, students analyze an exponential growth model of increase in number of cells. The final section provides a very brief introduction to cellular differentiation. 

This activity can be used as an introduction to mitosis or to reinforce understanding of mitosis. 

In our follow-up meiosis and fertilization activity (/sci_edu/waldron/#meiosis) students learn how the movement of gene-carrying chromosomes during meiosis and fertilization results in the inheritance of genes.

Mitosis and the Cell Cycle – How the Trillions of Cells in a Human Body Developed from a Single Cell

In this minds-on analysis and discussion activity, students learn how the cell cycle produces genetically identical daughter cells. They analyze how DNA replication and mitosis work together to ensure that each new cell gets a complete set of chromosomes with a complete set of genes.

To understand how a single cell (the fertilized egg) can develop into the trillions of cells in a human body, students analyze an exponential growth model for the increase in number of cells. The final section provides a brief introduction to cellular differentiation.

This activity can be used as an introduction to mitosis or to reinforce understanding of mitosis. A hands-on version of this activity is available as “Mitosis and the Cell Cycle – How a Single Cell Develops into the Trillions of Cells in a Human Body”.

Mitosis, Meiosis and Fertilization

Newer Version Available

The activity below has a new and improved version available as two separate handouts; this older version is available as an archive to teachers still using it. Please find the new version at: Mitosis - How Each New Cell Gets a Complete Set of Genes and Meiosis and Fertilization – Understanding How Genes Are Inherited.

 

ARCHIVE

In the  hands-on activity, Mitosis, Meiosis and Fertilization, students use model chromosomes to simulate the processes of mitosis, meiosis and fertilization, and they answer questions designed to promote understanding of these processes. To demonstrate the principle that genes are transmitted from parents to offspring through the processes of meiosis and fertilization, students follow two alleles of a gene through gametes to zygotes as they model meiosis and fertilization. Students also learn how a mistake in meiosis can result in Down Syndrome.

Molecular Biology: Major Concepts and Learning Activities

This overview reviews key concepts and learning activities to help students understand how genes influence our traits by molecular processes.  Topics covered include basic understanding of the important roles of proteins and DNA; DNA structure, function and replication; the molecular biology of how genes influence traits, including transcription and translation; the molecular biology of mutations; and genetic engineering. 

To help students understand the relevance of these molecular processes, the suggested learning activities link alleles of specific genes to human characteristics such as albinism, hemophilia, sickle cell anemia and muscular dystrophy. Suggested activities include analysis and discussion activities, hands-on laboratory and simulation activities, web-based simulations, and a vocabulary review game.

The attached files have the overview of key concepts, with descriptions of relevant learning activities and links to the activities. 

Natural Selection and the Peppered Moth

Peppered moths on tree barkIn this minds-on analysis and discussion activity, students interpret evidence concerning natural selection in the peppered moth. The evidence includes (1) the genetic basis for the different color forms of peppered moths, (2) mortality differences between the color forms in different environments, and (3) a history of correlated changes in the environment and the proportion of moths with each color form.

This activity will help students to consolidate a scientifically accurate understanding of the process of natural selection. 

(This activity is very similar to the last section of the hands-on activity Evolution by Natural Selection.)

Negative Feedback, Homeostasis, and Positive Feedback

Analysis and discussion questions develop student understanding of negative and positive feedback and homeostasis.

For example, students develop a model of negative feedback regulation of body temperature; this model includes a temperature control center in the brain that uses information about differences between a setpoint and actual body temperature to regulate sweating, shivering, and changes in blood flow to the skin.

The setpoint for negative feedback can be changed; for example, in response to an infection the temperature setpoint can be increased, resulting in a fever.

Negative feedback contributes to homeostasis.

Sometimes negative feedback does not function properly; for example, diabetes results from abnormalities in negative feedback regulation of blood glucose levels.

Finally, students analyze how positive feedback contributes to rapid change (e.g., rapid formation of a platelet plug).

Negative Feedback, Homeostasis, and Positive Feedback, with Breathing Experiment

This minds-on, hands-on activity begins with an anchoring phenomenon, how a person’s breathing changes when he/she is re-breathing the air in a plastic bag. Students develop a negative feedback model of how the changes in breathing stabilize blood levels of O2 and CO2.

Then, students use a negative feedback model to understand temperature regulation, homeostasis, and how a change in setpoint can result in a fever.

Next, students analyze how failures of negative feedback regulation of blood glucose levels can result in diabetes.

Finally, students compare and contrast positive and negative feedback. Throughout this activity, students learn relevant human physiology.

An Appendix for the Teacher Preparation Notes suggests an optional activity in which each student group investigates a question or hypothesis concerning negative feedback, homeostasis and changes in breathing. 

Download Student Handout: PDF format or Word format

Photosynthesis Investigation

cell diagramIn the first part of this activity, students learn how to use the floating leaf disk method to measure the rate of net photosynthesis (i.e. the rate of photosynthesis minus the rate of cellular respiration). They use this method to show that net photosynthesis occurs in leaf disks in a solution of sodium bicarbonate, but not in water. Questions guide students in reviewing the relevant biology and analyzing and interpreting their results. In the second part of this activity, student groups develop hypotheses about factors that influence the rate of net photosynthesis, and then each student group designs and carries out an investigation to test the effects of one of these factors. (NGSS)

Photosynthesis, Cellular Respiration and Plant Growth

This minds-on, hands-on activity begins with the driving question of how a tiny seed grows into a giant sequoia tree.

To address this question, students first consider what types of molecules and atoms are in plants. Next, they analyze data from an experiment on changes in plant biomass in the light vs. dark. Then, they conduct an experiment to evaluate changes in CO2 concentration in the air around plants in the light vs. dark.

Students interpret these data to develop an increasingly accurate and evidence-based model of the contributions of photosynthesis and cellular respiration to changes in plant biomass.

This activity counteracts several common misconceptions about plant growth, photosynthesis, and cellular respiration. (NGSS)

Plant Growth Puzzle – Photosynthesis, Biosynthesis and Cellular Respiration

Photosynthesis and cellular respiration cycle with the hydrolysis of ATP

This minds-on analysis and discussion activity challenges students to explain changes in biomass for plants growing in the light vs. dark. Students analyze how photosynthesis, biosynthesis, and cellular respiration affect biomass.

The Teacher Notes suggest three possible additions to this activity that expand student understanding of photosynthesis, cellular respiration, hydrolysis of ATP, biosynthesis, and starch. (NGSS)

The Student Handout is available in the first two attached files and as a Google doc designed for use in distance learning and online instruction. (For additional instructions, see https://serendipstudio.org/exchange/bioactivities/Googledocs, especially item 7.) The Teacher Notes, available in the last two attached files, provide instructional suggestions and background information and explain how this activity is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards.

Soap Opera Genetics – Genetics to Resolve Real-Life Dilemmas

Family tree by blood type

This analysis and discussion activity contains three "soap opera" episodes that help students to understand the principles of inheritance and the relevance of genetics to everyday life. In the first episode, students answer the probing questions of a skeptical father who wants to know how his baby could have albinism when neither he nor his wife have albinism.

The second episode, "Were the babies switched?", covers the concepts of codominance, incomplete dominance, and polygenic inheritance, and reinforces student understanding that the alleles of a gene give the instructions for making different versions of a protein.

In the third episode, students analyze sex-linked inheritance. Each episode can be used separately or with other episodes, depending on your teaching goals.

Some Similarities between the Spread of Infectious Disease and Population Growth

Graphs with exponential growth and logistic growthFirst, students analyze a hypothetical example of exponential growth in the number of infected individuals.

Then, a class simulation of the spread of an infectious disease shows a trend that approximates logistic growth.

Next, students analyze examples of exponential and logistic population growth and learn about the biological processes that result in exponential or logistic population growth.

Finally, students analyze how changes in the biotic or abiotic environment can affect population size; these examples illustrate the limitations of the exponential and logistic population growth models. 

Stability and Change in Biological Communities

This analysis and discussion activity engages students in understanding how biological communities remain stable and how they change during ecological succession.

Students analyze several types of research evidence, including (1) repeated observations of a biological community to assess stability or change over time, (2) analyses of dated fossils in a peat bog, and (3) analyses of how mutualism, competition and trophic relationships contribute to stability or change in biological communities.

Students use this evidence to understand the causes of stability and succession in a variety of habitats, including a tropical forest, a new volcanic island, abandoned farm fields, and ponds. Students also analyze the effects of climate and non-native invasive plants.

The Student Handout is available in the first two attached files and as a Google doc designed for use in online instruction. The Teacher Notes, available in the third and fourth attached files, provide background information and instructional suggestion and explain how this activity is aligned with the Next Generation Science Standards. A PowerPoint with illustrations of each habitat is available in the last attachment.

Suggested Sequence of Topics and Learning Activities in a High School Biology Course

Minds-On Biology

In the proposed sequence of topics and learning activities, the major biological concepts build in a logical progression that uses earlier concepts to help students understand subsequent concepts and reinforces student understanding of earlier concepts as they are used in subsequent sections of the course. For example, students are introduced to DNA structure and function early in the course and then use their understanding of DNA structure and function to enhance their understanding of subsequent topics, such as genetics and cell structure and function.

The attached documents present the proposed sequence of topics and learning activities. The learning activities will help students meet the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) (http://serendipstudio.org/exchange/bioactivities/NGSS/listing).

The Ecology of Lyme Disease

Tick anatomy diagramThis analysis and discussion activity engages students in understanding the lifecycle and adaptations of black-legged ticks and the relationships between these ticks, their vertebrate hosts, and the bacteria that cause Lyme disease.

Students use this background to analyze when and where human risk of Lyme disease is greatest, why rates of Lyme disease have increased in recent decades in the US, and ecological approaches to preventing Lyme disease.

The Genetics of Sickle Cell Anemia and Sickle Cell Trait – How One Gene Affects Multiple Characteristics

In this activity, students analyze information about the molecular and cellular basis for sickle cell anemia and sickle cell trait. This provides the basis for understanding how a single gene can affect multiple phenotypic characteristics.

Students also create a Punnett square, analyze a pedigree, and evaluate the relative advantages of Punnett squares and pedigrees as models of inheritance.

The Teacher Notes include several optional questions which apply student understanding of the biology of sickle cell trait to practical and policy issues.