Genetic technology, genetic engineering, genetic manipulation; these terms are common in today's society and certainly make people uneasy but what do they really mean, and, more importantly, what do students think they mean?My students have a very basic background with heredity and genetics having not delved very deeply into this material. I begin the lesson by showing Frank Gregorio's. With its powerful music and images, it is designed to elicit a response and is a great way to introduce the topic of genetics, as well as begin to activate prior knowledge. I use the PowerPoint to guide this portion of the lesson and the link to this video is included (it helps me to keep everything I need all in one place).Following the video, I ask students to explain what genetics means from their perspective. Most students recognize that genes are the directions in the DNA that determine a person's traits.I next ask students what they think the term 'genetic technologies' or 'genetic engineering' means.
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While I am not looking for any formal phrasing at this point, I am looking for the idea of using technology to understand, manipulate or alter genetic instructions.Finally, I write CLONING, GENETICALLY MODIFIED ORGANISMS, GENE THERAPY, GROWING HUMAN ORGANS, USING VIRUSES TO FIGHT DISEASE, and DNA PROFILING on the board. I ask students to quickly tell me what they think each word/phrase means to ensure they are aware of the basic meaning of each.I then ask the students to write down their gut reactions/emotional responses to these words.
For example, when I think of cloning the words that come to mind or describe my emotions are interesting, science fiction, exact copy, twins, scary, creepy, misunderstanding, etc. This can be done by having each student complete this list for each word, having each student at the table focus on a different word, or having the table collaborate on all of the words at once (I let the personality of each class determine the method of implementation).I have students use these words to create a Wordle (word cloud). I use Jonathan Feinberg's to show students an example of what I am looking for. If you have access to technology, the wordle can be created on the site very quickly, but I prefer to have my students create theirs by hand as it forces them to think more deeply about their reactions and the words they use.To do this, I begin by having students go through their list of words and highlight in yellow the words that are positive (like interesting or exciting) and highlight in blue the words that are negative (like fear or creepy). Words that are neutral in nature are not highlighted.I provide students with the following color code to use as they create their word cloud:. Negative words are written in blue or black.
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Positive words are written in red or orange. Neutral words are written in green or yellowThis color code will allow students to look at their completed cloud and at a glance recognize if their response was more positive, negative or neutral prior to completing any research on the topic. The following are some student examples.