CONCEPTS of
LIVING SYSTEMS
| This course provides a review and extension of concepts delineated by the Missouri science frameworks. It is part of a 4-semester course for 9th and 10th grade students with the objective to increase the student's level of achievement as measured by the MAP science tests. |
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Competency
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Activities
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Assessment |
| 1. Discuss how the variations of organisms within a species and diversity among species increases the likelihood that at least some organisms will survive the face of large changes in the environment. |
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| 2. Analyze the evidence for the nature and rate of evolution that can be found in anatomical and molecular characteristics of organisms and in the fossil record. |
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| 3. Conduct and analyze the results of a lab that provides information that the process of natural selection provides that some heritable variations arise from mutation and recombination gives individuals within a species some advantage over others for survival. |
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| 4. Explain how evolution does not proceed at the same rate in all organisms; nor does it progress in some set direction. |
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| 5. Classify organisms into hierarchial groups and subgroups, based on their structural similarities and reflect about the possible evolutionary relationships. |
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| 6. Determine the degree of kinship among organisms based on similarities in DNA and protein structure. |
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| 7. Predict the pattern of inheritance for traits using the principals of Mendelian genetics. |
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| 8. Analyze how social and economic forces, such as patent laws, the federal budget regulations, media attention and economic competition can influence the direction of progress for science and technology. |
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| 9. Evaluate how DNA indirectly controls what cells do and when they do it by encoding information directing the cell's synthesis of protein molecules. |
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| 10. Finish the constrution of DNA segments and explain how the hereditary information is contained within the various combinations of the four subunits that encode the DNA molecule. |
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| 11. Do error analysis of DNA subunits, and explain how these coding errors (mutations) can occur randomly during replication and can also be caused by heat and radiation. |
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| 12. Construct and explain characteristics of an organism productd through either asexual or sexual reproduction when given the parent DNA. |
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| 13. Create a model of a cell representing the organelles responsible for its survival and explain how these structures provide for chemical synthesis, energy conversion and material transport |
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| 14. Analyze how optimum conditions are maintained in an organism as a result of the special functions performed at the cellular level. |
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