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Description: Students identify and discuss
ethical issues in current biotechnology and genetic engineering. Quickly,
differing opinions arise among the students. Acting as a mediator or guide,
the teacher prevents a melee and suggests a debate. Students identify which
issue and position they wish to research and form teams.
The teacher points out that perhaps students of different cultural, ethnic
or religious backgrounds may have differing views and would like to debate,
too. These teams then contact a team from another school who has an opposing
view. (At the beginning of the first semester the teacher posts an invitation
on the Global SchoolNet
Projects Registry to any high school interested
in participating in this project during January. Also, invitations will
be made to schools in particular areas of our students' ethnic origins.)
Prior to researching the issues, students will learn about debate format
and evaluation criteria. Also, as a class students will develop generalized
criteria for the types of issues which will be used for evaluating the effectiveness
of the debates. For ongoing evaluation, the teacher will give feedback on
the fairness and importance of these criteria.
Given access to the internet and some teacher-suggested websites and experts(see
references) as starting points, students prepare their arguments and their
rebuttals for the opposing view. The teacher will act as a facilitator,
guiding and redirecting their research when necessary. A preliminary evaluation
of the teams' points of argument will be made by the teacher.
Each team's position will be published on the WYHS
website. The participating schools will respond
by sending their position via e-mail which will be posted on the WYHS website,
as well. This exchange will continue following typical debate guidelines
except the exchanges will not be immediate, considering the time differences
of the participating schools. Students will do peer evaluation based on
the formal debate criteria and those of their own making.
Subject: Honors Biology
Grade: eighth
Learner description: Gifted students from a wide variety of ethnic and religious
backgrounds and students of specified backgrounds from other schools
time frame: beginning second semester 1 day to introduce the project, 3-4
days to meet cooperating schools and do research, 1 day to write evaluation
criteria, 3-4 days to debate and do peer evaluations.
learner outcomes: