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| |  | SCI-LIT LINKS QUICKPLAN
HUMAN TRAITS
(QuickPlan developed by Dr. Ken Mechling, Clarion, Pennsylvania)
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OVERVIEW: In this lesson, children investigate some of their own traits, how they are the same, how they are different, and how they are affected by heredity.
BOOKLINK: We're Different, We're the Same by Bobbi Jane Kates, Random House, 1992. ISBN 0-679-83227-0
SCIENCE ACTIVITY LINK: Children are asked by the teacher to illustrate human genetic traits such as tongue rolling, hitchhiker's thumb, hand clasping, arm folding, free or attached ear lobes, dimples, etc. The teacher then reads the book, pointing out how people are the same and how they are different.
OBJECTIVE: Children will observe, compare, and describe physical differences among themselves. Older children will link these traits to dominant and recessive genes related to human heredity.
SCIENCE PROCESSES AND CONTENT: Processes—observing, classifying, inferring, communicating, model building, investigating, and recording data. Content—characteristics of organisms, human heredity, genes, chromosomes, and DNA.
NATIONAL SCIENCE EDUCATION STANDARDS: Unifying Concepts and Processes, (1) Science as Inquiry, (3) Life Science, (7) History and Nature of Science
MATERIALS: Book We're Different, We're the Same, transparency of dominant and recessive human traits
PROCEDURE:
1. Ask the children to describe examples of how everyone in the class is different and how everyone is the same.
2. Demonstrate (if you can) human traits, one at a time, that are inherited from our ancestors through our mothers and fathers; traits including tongue rolling, widow's peak, hitchhiker's thumb, free ear lobes, crossing the arms with left over right, and so on. Use the overhead transparency as a guide. Have the children note (record data) each one of their own traits as they do them with you. If you do not have the trait, show a child who does. You may wish to have the children note whether the trait is dominant or recessive.
3 Explain to the children that whether or not we have these traits is determined by chemical chains called genes, which we inherit from our parents. For example, if we can roll our tongue, there is a chemical chain in our body, a gene, that enables us to roll it. Tongue rolling is a dominant trait. If we can't roll our tongue, we don't have the chemical gene for tongue rolling. No rolling is a recessive trait. (For your information, the genes are found on our chromosomes, 23 pairs, and the chemicals that we inherit that determine our traits are called DNA).
4. Finally, read the book We're Different, We're the Same. Note the ways we are different, as illustrated in the text, then have the children predict ways we are the same before turning the page to find out how we are the same.
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