Overview

Grades

3+ (Ages 8+)

Time

40 minutes per lab

Unit Essential Question(s)

How do living organisms pass on traits?

Unit Understandings

The following concepts will be covered throughout this Unit:

How parents share traits with their offspring.
How inheriting different traits creates variation in species

Lab Summary

Click on the following tabs for a summary of what the students will do and learn in each lab.

Lab 1 - What Are Traits?

Main Focus Question: How do inherited traits create diversity in living organisms?

Begin by asking students what characteristics they share with a parent or sibling. Students will then build the first variation of the Bunny Traits build, completing one “parent” bunny. Students will record the traits for each build in the Data Collection Sheet.

In Play Part 1, students will build the second parent bunny by following the second option in the build instructions. During the Mid-Play Break, students will engage in a discussion about traits and compare both parent bunnies.

In Play Part 2, students will use the trait data from their Data Collection Sheet to choose traits that a baby bunny will inherit, and build a third variation of the Bunny Traits build.

Unit Standards

Unit Standards will be addressed in every Lab within the Unit.

Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)

3-LS3-1: Analyze and interpret data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms.

How Standard is Achieved: In this Unit, students will build several variations of the Bunny Traits build to observe how traits make bunnies different. Students will track data about traits in a Data Collection Sheet. Students will choose which traits from the parent bunnies will be inherited by baby bunnies. Students will see how inheriting different traits creates diversity in organisms by comparing their baby bunnies and their data with the class.

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