This project was created as an assignment in Planning Interactive Curriculum Connections, an online class offered by Berrien RESA and taught by Janine Lim.
TOPIC: GENETIC ENGINEERING
In my biology class I have culminated genetics units with bioethics; cloning, genetic engineering, and now ... choosing the sex of your babies. I conduct a seminar in which the students research a specific topic, participate in an hour long discussion in class, and finally write a paper arguing their stance.TIME: 60 MINUTES
MATERIALS:
Genetic Engineering articles (3)
Rubric for presentationOUTLINE OF PROJECT:
1 WEEK BEFORE CONFERENCE - Students from both classes will discuss reproductive cloning, therapeutic cloning and the basics of genetic engineering. Each student will be given a packet of three articles about cloning. (THEY MUST BE RETURNED ... it's a lot of paper!) Each article is written by a scientist that supports, refutes, or is undecided about the application of cloning techniques in humans. The students must read the articles on their own time and take notes (on a separate piece of paper) from each article.DURING CONFERENCE
Students must bring their articles with them to the conference. The first phase of the conference is for the students to state their initial stance on cloning. After the student's initial response, every contribution to the discussion MUST be supported by something from one of the articles. Each student must contribute 3 things to the discussion. They are graded on the appropriateness of their responses to others and their references to the articles. The students from both classes will participate in the discussion via videoconference.
(If the classes are too large, the teachers can assign stances to groups of students with one representative speaking)AFTER THE CONFERENCE
Upon completion of the conference, the students must write a paper based on a scenario given by the teacher. They must include references to the articles and/or quotes from the seminar in their response.PARTICIPATION: One class at a time ... this is usually a pretty heated debate!
CONNECTION: H-320 ISDN and IP
NOTES: Religious issues often arise during this discussion. I always remind the students that the religious discussions should continue, but outside of the classroom ... keep the discussion on the science involved with cloning. Most of the time, however, the two are hard to separate.
Also, I will be doing this with my 9th graders so we will not be exploring all the technicalities of cloning. We will focus more on the scientific and social ramifications of this science.CREDIT WHERE CREDIT IS DUE: I originally got the idea from the mentor teacher in Waterford, MI during student teaching. I have modified it a bit and it has never failed to grab the attention of students.
CONTACT INFO: If you are interested, please contact me at lhoward@berkley.k12.mi.us