Driving Question: Are GMOs helpful or harmful?

Project: Create a model that represents genetic engineering and present it to the class.
Supplemental Questions:
1. How can GMOs be used to treat human diseases and disorders?
2. How can GMO animals be helpful for humans?
3. What is CRSPR and how can it be beneficial?
4. What benefits could cloning technology provide for humans?
5. Are GMO crops the most effective way to feed the global population?
  Students will have the ability to create their own driving questions.

Objectives:

Standards:
Students will be able to:
  • Make and defend a claim based on evidence about the natural world that reflects scientific knowledge, and student-generated evidence.
  • ​Ask questions to clarify relationships about the role of DNA and chromosomes in coding the instructions for characteristic traits passed from parents to offspring.
  • Make and defend a claim based on evidence that inheritable genetic variations may result from: (1) new genetic combinations through meiosis, (2) viable errors occurring during replication, and/or (3) mutations caused by environmental factors.
  • Analyze and interpret data on the processes of DNA replication, transcription, translation, and gene regulation, and show how these processes are the same in all organisms
5.  Students can use the full range of science and engineering practices to make sense of natural phenomena and solve problems that require understanding how individual organisms are configured and how these structures function to support life, growth, behavior and reproduction.

GLE 1: DNA codes for the complex hierarchical organization of systems that enable life's functions.
Construct an explanation based on evidence for how the structure of DNA determines the structure of proteins which carry out the essential functions of life through systems of specialized cells.

GLE 2: Growth and division of cells in complex organisms occurs by mitosis, which differentiates specific cell types.
Use a model to illustrate the role of cellular division (mitosis) and differentiation in producing and maintaining complex organisms

Assignments:

Engage: 
​1. Genetics Moral Issues Class Discussion
​2.  Food Inc. Video
​Explore:
* Watch each of the following videos.  In your notebook, write down key definitions and new knowledge.
1. What is a GMO? video
2. Making transgenic animals ​and plants
3. Spider Goats
    Silk extraction
4. Engineering and       growing corn
 
​5. FDA article
  • *There are additional, good articles linked at the bottom of this article.
Explain:
1. Click and Clone with             worksheet (to be        completed on google classroom)
2.  Golden Rice Article 1
     summary (to be completed         on google classroom)
3.  Rice Article 2
     summary (to be completed        on google classroom)
4.  GMO Concept Map
5. Should we grow GM crops? PBS discussion

​
CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING:

1. ​Discovery Ed STEM Project 1
​2. Discovery Ed STEM Project 2


​
Elaborate:
1.  Discovery Ed Project
​2.  Choice: Consider the prompts from the class discussion - Talk to Mr. Lemon to approve different ideas
(to be completed on google classroom using the Project Organization Sheet)
Evaluate:
1. Self-evaluation
2. Peer-evaluation

Resources: