NEW AQA GCSE Trilogy (2016) Biology - Variation

This lesson is designed for the NEW AQA Trilogy Biology GCSE, particularly the ‘Inheritance, variation and evolution’ SoW.

For more lessons designed to meet specification points for the NEW AQA Trilogy specifications for Biology, Chemistry and Physics please see my shop: https://www.tes.com/teaching-resources/shop/SWiftScience

The lesson begins with students given some pictures of a range of people that look differently to one another, students will need to think > pair > share what the differences are between these people and the reasons why they look different to each other.

Pupils will then be introduced to the difference between examples of inherited and environmental characteristics. Firstly pupils will focus on inherited characteristics, the students will need to complete a mind map in their books of the traits they have inherited from their parents (or from grandparents). As an extra challenge pupils can consider why they do not look identical to either parent.

The next task will focus on environmental characteristics, pupils will need to draw a table in their books and they will need to sort examples of environmental factors with the type of environmental variation they cause into the table correctly. This work can be self-assessed once it is is complete using the answers provided.

For the next activity pupils will be given a card sort of different examples of variation, e.g. height, freckles, eye colour, tattoos. Pupils will need to sort these cards into a Venn diagram in their books - just inherited variation, just environmental variation or potentially caused by both. This work can be self-assessed once it is complete.

The next part of the lesson focuses on types of data - continuous or discontinuous. Pupils are firstly shown the difference between the two and then they will need to complete a worksheet to assess their understanding on this. Once completed the worksheet can be self or peer assessed.

The final task is for pupils to get into teams (or be sorted by the teacher into teams) and they work their way around the room filling in information about themselves for different types of traits (e.g. handedness, foot length, whether they can roll their tongue). Pupils will assigned one trait each and will need to produce a graph of the class results. This will test their understanding of continuous vs. discontinuous data and how this should be represented in a graph format.

The plenary task is for pupils to consider a world where there was no variation and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this world, trying to use some of the key words provided.

All resources are included at the end of the presentation. Thanks for looking, if you have any questions please let me know in the comments section and any feedback would be appreciated :)