Reebop Breeding: Modeling Inheritance and Phenotype Digitally

After completing a virtual or hands-on simulation, students will be able to:

• Explain how the simulation models the processes of meiosis and fertilization during sexual reproduction, AND
• Describe how these processes generate genetic and physical diversity from generation to generation.

This lesson begins with asking students to think about living things that humans have changed over time using selective breeding. Students then engage in a guided inquiry model of meiosis, fertilization, and heredity rules to uncover a vital story of information flow.

To do so, they will:

• Create and analyze digital models of meiosis and fertilization in marshmallow dragons (called Reebops),
• Use the resulting genotypes and a digital drawing template to represent the phenotype of their resulting baby,
• Analyze the class set of babies for trends, and
• Write a final reflection.

EMBEDDED ASSESSMENTS AND THEIR PURPOSE

FORMATIVE: Notebook statements

• These embedded-in-assignment prompts, prompting students to write brief reflections as the lesson progresses, can be used as formative assessments in a synchronous class, asking students to link the instructions in the simulation to real-life biological processes.
• Use these statements to clear up misconceptions in advance of the summative final writing.

FORMATIVE: Screenshot of Reebop “baby”

• This will allow you to see that students have progressed far enough in the assignment that they should have added a picture of their baby to the nursery slide show, creating the class data set.
• It will also help you do a quick check to make sure that the phenotypes shown by the assembled model of the “baby” are among those anticipated and structured in the standardized format. Ask students to re-make their babies with feedback from you if they are not.

FORMATIVE AND SUMMATIVE: “Putting it together” final paragraph

• This assessment allows you to assess students’ levels of explaining how the modeling exercise accurately represents real-life processes of sexual reproduction.
  • Depending on where in your curriculum you teach this unit, you might also ask students to reflect on how this exercise connects to simple Punnett squares, dominant/recessive phenotypes, or Mendelian or non-Mendelian genetics.
• This assessment also allows an assessment of students’ written descriptions of how these processes generate genetic and phenotypic/physical diversity from generation to generation.
  • Depending on the course in which you are teaching this lesson, you might provide more or less scaffolding between the table students create in Part 2, the notebook statements of Part 1, and this description task.
• The final paragraph is designed to summarize the learning from this lesson, but most students will need a few tries to explain their thinking all the way through and/or use sufficient detail from the exercise in their responses.
  • Encourage students whose performances don’t yet reach proficiency to resubmit their work, preferably for full credit, to encourage growth mindset and metacognition.
  • Be sure to provide feedback on what the student’s next performance should improve upon.

• Student-facing assignment document
  • Students will not make their own copy of this document.
• Reebop template and workspaces.
  • You will need to make a copy of this document and edit it slightly before sharing the copy with your students. See instructions below.
  • Students will make their own copy of your edited document.
• Reebop nursery
  • You will need to make a copy of this document and edit it slightly before sharing the copy with your students. See instructions below.
  • Students will contribute to your edited copy of this shared document.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT INSTRUCTIONS (15 minutes)

Before sharing lesson documents with students:

1. Make your own copy of the Student-facing assignment document for your students by going to File → Make a copy.
   • Set the sharing on your copy so your students will be able to VIEW (not edit).
   • If necessary, update assignment submission instructions on your copy.
   • If necessary, replace language about “lab notebooks” with “on a separate piece of paper.”
2. Make your own copy of the Reebop nursery for your students by going to File → Make a copy.
   • Set the sharing on your copy so your students will be able to EDIT.
   • Rename the file to remove the teacher instructions.
3. Make your own copy of the Reebop template and workspaces by going to File → Make a copy.
   • Make sure that “Copy comments” is NOT selected as you make a copy.
   • Once your copy is created, set the sharing so students will be able to VIEW (not edit).
4. Click here to visit the ORIGINAL Reebop template and workspaces and go to Slide 14. Read the comment to TEACHERS on that slide.
5. In YOUR copy of the Reebop template and workspaces document, find slide 14 and replace the link on that slide with YOUR copy of the Reebop nursery document.
6. Make the Part 1 and Part 2 assignments in Canvas. In the details of both, share the links to
   • YOUR copy of the Student-facing assignment document and
   • YOUR copy of the Reebop template and workspaces.
7. Be sure you share YOUR copy of the Student-facing assignment document and YOUR copy of the Reebop template and workspaces document with your students.
   • Students will access the Reebop nursery using the link you just made in your copy of the template and workspaces document.

See notes at the bottom of this section for suggestions about how to modify this assignment to suit your students’/your needs.

TIME REQUIREMENTS: As presented here, this assignment takes approximately

• One sixty-minute work period (Part 1) and
• One twenty- to thirty-minute work period (Part 2).
• Students will use their submitted work for Part 1 in Part 2, so Part 2 must be scheduled after the due date for Part 1.

TECH REQUIREMENTS: Students will need

• A device with access to the internet.
• A Google Drive account to use Google Docs and Google Slides.
• A camera to take pictures of their handwritten notes.
• A way to turn in assignments (via your school’s learning management system such as Canvas or Schoology, or by a Google Form you create).
• If your students are learning remote-only, consider recording walkthrough videos where you read through the assignment in a screencast. Make the walkthrough available to students as an optional resource so those who process well using auditory input are supported.

INTRODUCING AND FACILITATING THE LESSON

In your introduction, choose one or more hooks that will be of interest to your students and elicit their prior knowledge about the topic. Several examples are given in the introduction on the student handout, but selective breeding development of crops offers an opportunity to build critical consciousness of how Native people’s intelligence and scientific practice allowed them to create some of our most beloved foods, many years before what we consider modern agricultural laboratory science.

To engage students in this hook

• Before class, select some of the foods from the list at this link. List the foods for students and ask “What do these foods all have in common?” Allow students to brainstorm independently, then share what they know with a partner or small group before sharing with the whole class.
• Then tell students that corn, peppers, chocolate, pineapples, potatoes, and many more beloved foods were first domesticated by Indigenous Americans.
  • Corn’s ancient ancestor was a grain called teosinte that bears little resemblance to the food we know!
  • For more details on how modern scientists have uncovered the corn-creating brilliance of ancient people in what we now know as Mexico, check out this short film from HHMI’s BioInteractive.
• Say to students, “In this lesson, we’ll be carrying out a breeding program, using the same procedure as the real thing, by applying the same rules that apply to living things.”
• To connect the simulation to these ideas about crops, bring students together at the conclusion of the simulation for a quick small-group or class discussion. Consider posing questions like:
  • Imagine the Reebop breeding simulation happening again with your babies as the genetic parents, and then again with the new babies as the genetic parents. How does that connect to how Indigenous Americans developed the foods we talked about earlier?
  • Were some Reebop phenotypes rarer than others? If so, which ones? How would you design a program to increase the frequency of those phenotypes in the next generation?
  • Which phenotypes would have been most desirable for the Native peoples who were breeding the ancestor plants of corn? Of peppers?

This lesson is designed to be completed asynchronously or synchronously. Teachers can facilitate the lesson in real time by:

• Answering questions that students may have.
• Facilitating think-pair-shares, share-alouds, or read-someone-else’s-answer protocols about the notebook prompts as formative assessment.
• Encouraging students to share their answers-in-progress with each other as a formative assessment.

TYING THIS LESSON TO ASSESSMENT/EXPECTED OUTCOMES

• The final prompt in this assignment directly asks students to perform the expected outcomes.
• Encourage students whose performances don’t yet reach proficiency to re-submit their work, preferably for full credit, to encourage growth mindset and metacognition.
  • Be sure to provide feedback on what the student’s next performance should improve upon.

TRANSITIONING TO THE NEXT ACTIVITY

How you do this will depend on your curriculum sequence for biology or life science. This activity creates a foundation for students to go on to explore:

• Protein structure and function
• Genotypes and phenotypes
• Meiosis and heredity
• Punnett squares
• The Central Dogma/information flow
• Mendelian and non-Mendelian genetics

MODIFICATIONS TO SUIT YOUR/YOUR STUDENTS’ NEEDS

• As an alternative hook for this activity, have students choose individually to research either dogs or crops/food. Have students do some internet searching on their selective breeding case study, then share what they discovered with a partner or small group.
• As designed, this assignment has students complete this assignment in handwriting, which is particularly important if they’ve otherwise been doing a lot of typing in a digital setting. However, feel free to collect their work in whatever format makes sense.
• Depending on when in the curriculum you give this assignment, you can ask students to use different vocabulary words/terms or connect this assignment to what they’ve learned already in the final writing.
  • Consider asking how this exercise models/connects to simple Punnett squares, dominant/recessive phenotypes, or Mendelian or non-Mendelian genetics.
• Remote or digital-only students can work with a partner in a breakout room or can complete this assignment independently.
• You can give students more formatting flexibility in the final assignment.
• You can print out chromosomes to allow groups of students to create the model of meiosis and fertilization using manipulatives. See here for the paper chromosomes.
• Students can also create the marshmallow dragons in person, using craft materials like marshmallows, toothpicks, beads, candies, and pushpins. This is great fun! However, in order for students to see the diversity of Reebops that occur from this exercise, make sure students also create their Reebops digitally and put them in the slide-show nursery.

AP Biology standards:

• IST-1.F Explain how meiosis results in the transmission of chromosomes from one generation to the next.
• IST-1.H Explain how the process of meiosis generates genetic diversity.
• IST-1.I Explain the inheritance of genes and traits as described by Mendel’s laws.

IN state content standard for biology:

• B.4.5 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 (3) mutations caused by environmental factors. 

IN state science process standard:

• SEPS.2 Use and construct conceptual models that illustrate ideas and explanations.