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Garden Genetics: Teaching With Edible Plants (Teacher Edition)


By: Elizabeth Rice, Marianne Krasny, and Margaret E. Smith
$15.16 - Member Price  
$18.95 - Nonmember Price

See below for special set pricing.

$19.71 - Member Price  
$24.64 - Nonmember Price
Details

Type of Product:NSTA Press Book (also see downloadable PDF version of this book)
Average Rating:
 based on 1 review
Publication Date:1/1/2006
Pages:331
Stock Number:PB199XT
ISBN:978-0-87355-264-6
Grade Level:High School, Informal Education
Read Inside:Read a sample chapter: It Skips a Generation: Traits, Genes, and Crosses
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Our reviewers—top-flight teachers and other outstanding science educators—have determined that this resource is among the best available supplements for science teaching.
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Description

Tired of teaching genetic concepts with the same old pink petunias and Mendel’s peas? With Garden Genetics, you can present core content in ways that are fun for students and fresh for you.

This two-part set—a teacher edition and companion student edition—is adaptable to biology students at all levels, including AP. It uses a series of activities and inquiry-based experiments with familiar foods to teach genetics while helping students make connections to ecology, evolution, plant biology, and even social science. What makes Garden Genetics unique is its emphasis on modern food-plant-based situations. For example, to learn about Punnett’s squares, students taste variations in bitterness in cucumber seedlings and then design experiments investigating the surprising role that bitterness plays in protecting plants from insects. To learn about plant breeding, students re-enact a trial in which farmers sued seed companies to compensate for $1 billion in U.S. corn crop losses caused by genetic uniformity.

Garden Genetics is designed to be flexible. You can use each chapter as a stand-alone unit, or teach the book as a whole. Activities range from guided worksheets to open-ended inquiry. Most important, the innovative content emphasizes the problem-solving skills demanded in today’s cutting-edge science classes.

Ideas For Use

Garden Genetics uses a series of inquiry activities and experiments to teach both traditional and cutting-edge genetics. Throughout the text and activities, connections are made between genetics, evolution, ecology, and plant biology. The activities are targeted for use in grade 9-12 biology classes with students of all levels.

Additional Info

Science Discipline: (mouse over for full classification)
Biomes
Food web
Populations
DNA
Genes
Mutations
Analyzing data
Collecting data
Communicating
Experimenting
Hypothesizing
Interpreting data
Measuring
Modeling
Observing
Scientific habits of mind
Plants
Evolution
Intended User Role:Curriculum Supervisor, High-School Educator, Informal Educator, Teacher
Educational Issues:Achievement, Assessment of students, Classroom management, Curriculum, Educational research, Informal education, Inquiry learning, Instructional materials, Learning theory, Teacher content knowledge, Teacher preparation

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION
• Why Garden Genetics?
• Section 1: Cucumbers
• Section 2: Corn
• Section 3: Tomatoes
• How to Use This Book
• SciLinks

SECTION 1: CUCUMBERS

CHAPTER 1. “IT SKIPS A GENERATION”: TRAITS, GENES, AND CROSSES
Teacher Notes
Activity 1. Edible Punnett’s Squares: Segregation Ratios You Can Taste
• Part I. Your unknown population
• Part II. Parents and grandparents
• Part III. The crosses of the different generations
• Part IV. Testing your hypothesis
• Part V. Conclusions
Optional Directions for Filling in the Punnett’s Squares

CHAPTER 2. BITTERNESS AND NON-BITTERNESS IN CUCUMBERS: A STORY OF MUTATION
Teacher Notes
Activity 2. Proteins, Codons, and Mutations
• Part I. DNA sequence
• Part II. Protein sequence
• Part III. Mutation
• Part IV. Mutation of the bitterness gene

CHAPTER 3. SURVIVAL STRATEGIES
Teacher Notes
Activity 3. Insect Predation and Plant Genes
• Part I: Design your experiment
• Part II: Data and results
• Part III: Conclusions
• Part IV: Applying what you’ve learned
• Cage Building Directions

SECTION 2: CORN

CHAPTER 4. DOMESTICATION: EVOLVING TOWARD HOME
Teacher Notes
Activity 4. Corn and the Archeological Record
• Part I: Predictions
• Part II: Evidence of domestication—genetic
• Part III: Evidence of domestication—archeological
• Part IV: Putting the evidence together

CHAPTER 5. THE RISKS OF IMPROVEMENT: GENETIC UNIFORMITY AND AN EPIDEMIC
Teacher Notes
Activity 5. Trial
• Part I: Trial format
• Part II: Roles and overview
• Part III: Roles and material
• Part IV: Optional extra role and material

CHAPTER 6. GENETIC ENGINEERING
Teacher Notes
Activity 6. Congressional Hearing on Genetic Engineering
• Part I: Congressional hearing
• Part II: Roles
• Part III: Notes
• Part IV: Opinion pager

CHAPTER 7. SWEET GENES IN CORN
Teacher Notes
Activity 7. Sweet Seeds
• Part I: Design your experiment
• Part II: Data and results
• Part III: Conclusions
• Part IV: Applying what you’ve learned

SECTION 3: TOMATOES

CHAPTER 8. CENTERS OF DIVERSITY
Teacher Notes
Activity 8. Where Does It Come From?
• Part I: Biomes and food plants
• Part II: Centers of origin and food plants

CHAPTER 9. QUANTITATIVE TRAITS
Teacher Notes
Activity 9. Mapping Tomato Color Part I: QTL Study
• Part II: Verification

STUDENT EDITION


This Title Also Available as Part of a Set:
Set: Garden Genetics (teacher and student editions)
This set includes both the teacher and student edition.
Member Price: $17.56 Nonmember Price: $21.95
Set: Garden Genetics (5 student editions)
This set includes 5 student editions for the price of 4.
Member Price: $28.64 Nonmember Price: $35.80
Set: Garden Genetics (10 student editions and 1 teacher edition)
This set includes 10 student editions and a free teacher edition.
Member Price: $71.60 Nonmember Price: $89.50

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National Standards Correlation

This resource has 23 correlations with the National Standards.  
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This resource has 23 correlations with the National Standards.  
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  • Life Science
    • Reproduction and heredity
      • Plants also reproduce sexually--the egg and sperm are produced in the flowers of flowering plants.
      • An egg and sperm unite to begin development of a new individual. That new individual receives genetic information from its mother (via the egg) and its father (via the sperm).
      • Every organism requires a set of instructions for specifying its traits
      • Hereditary information is contained in genes, located in the chromosomes of each cell.
    • Populations and ecosystems
      • A population consists of all individuals of a species that occur together at a given place and time.
      • Parasites are organisms that live in or on another organisms.
      • Food webs identify the relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers in an ecosystem.
    • Molecular basis of heredity
      • Changes in DNA (mutations) occur spontaneously at low rates. (9-12)
      • Only mutations in germ cells can create the variation that changes an organism's offspring. (9-12)
    • Biological evolution
      • Evolution is the consequence of the interactions of the potential for a species to increase its numbers. (9-12)
      • Evolution is the consequence of the interactions of the genetic variability of offspring due to mutation and recombination of genes. (9-12)
  • Science as Inquiry
    • Abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry
      • Use data to construct a reasonable explanation.
      • Design and conduct a scientific investigation.
      • Use appropriate tools and techniques to gather, analyze, and interpret data.
      • Develop descriptions, explanations, predictions, and models using evidence.
      • Think critically and logically to make the relationships between evidence and explanations.
      • Communicate scientific procedures and explanations.
    • Understandings about scientific inquiry
      • Types of investigations include describing objects, events, and organisms; classifying them; and doing a fair test (experimenting).
      • Simple instruments, such as magnifiers, thermometers, and rulers, provide more information than scientists obtain using only their senses.
      • Scientists develop explanations using observations (evidence) and what they already know about the world (scientific knowledge). Good explanations are based on evidence from investigations.
      • Different kinds of questions suggest different kinds of scientific investigations. Some investigations involve observing and describing objects, organisms, or events; some involve collecting specimens; some involve experiments; some involve seeking more information; some involve discovery of new objects and phenomena; and some involve making models.
  • Content Standards
    • Quality Teaching
      • Deepens educators’ content knowledge, provides them with research-based instructional strategies to assist students in meeting rigorous academic standards, and prepares them to use various types of classroom assessments appropriately. (NSDC)
  • Teaching Standards
    • Teachers of science plan an inquiry-based science program for their students.
      • Select science content and adapt and design curricula to meet the interests, knowledge, understanding, abilities, and experiences of students.


Published Reviews

“With an emphasis on problem solving, these winning activities and experiments will help biology students develop a deeper understanding of the science and some current issues under debate. The activities are inquiry based, linked to NSTA SciLinks, and include worksheets that can easily be incorporated into instruction.”
Curriculum Connections, School Library Journal, Spring 2007


Customer Reviews
Garden Genetics Review
  Reviewed by: Amanda Obery (Morgantown, WV) on November 1, 2007
  This text is a nice way to introduce basic genetics concepts. The text is easy to read, and provides tons of pictures and diagrams. By using plants, students get to take an active role in exploration. The experiments with the cucumbers are fantastic and can be used for middle school students on up through college students. Some of the experiments are difficult to manage in a classroom (exp. with beetles) and others are too worksheet based in nature. Overall, its a cheap text that can jumpstart your usage of plants in the classroom but its experiments are hit/miss.

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