Electronic Portfolio The University of Pennsylvania's Science Teacher Institute Master of Integrated Science Education Program

Use of New Content Knowledge in Designing Instruction – The participant has demonstrated the application of new scientific knowledge in the design of teaching materials, lesson plans, and/or assessments used in his or her own classroom.

Related Course: BIOL 501 - PRINCIPLES OF BIOLOGICAL SCIENCE

I chose my Biology lesson plan about Punnett Squares to show how I applied new scientific knowledge in designing teaching materials, lesson plans, and assessments. One of the topics that we leanred about in this course was meiosis. This was a challenging topic for me to understand, which is one of the reasons I wanted to work on it when my group had tp develop a lesson plan about one of the topics we studied in the course. I taught math and saw the connection between it and Punnett Squares. I wanted to be able to provide students with an explanation of why and how to use them to illustrate what could happen through meiosis. Based on researched misconceptions about meiosis, and my own misconceptions, I designed a worksheet entitled "Fertilization Chart"to help myself and students see what Punnett squares are really showing us. What I derived was that Punnett squares show a simplified version (only 4) of all of the possible combinations of alleles that could form during meiosis. The worksheet I designed shows all 16 of the possible combinations that could form during meiosis. Those 16 simplify into the same 4 that would appear in a Punnett square. Somehow I was missing that concept which was making Punnet squares difficult to understand. Therefore the lesson includes an analysis section so that similarities can be made between the fertilization chart and Punnett squares, which helped me better understand the usefulness of the Punnett square.

I have not taught this lesson with my students yet, so I have not been able to evaluate the effectiveness of the worksheet I designed. I can personally say that it helped me understand why Punnett squares are worth using, and I hope that it would help a student understand as well.
The lesson I discussed above is one part of a set of lesson plans about meiosis and Punnett squares. Three of my classmates and I created them, beginning with an overview that includes suggested teaching practices and student misconceptions. Then there are three lesson plans to teach the topics of meiosis, Punnett Squares, and the math connection between Punnett Squares and Binomials.



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