Classification: Arbitrary or Not?
Classification: Arbitrary or Not?
Description:
Students working in teams classify furniture, share their categories and rationales, then note how their different schemes vary, perfectly logical and useful, but completely arbitrary. They then see how living organisms are classified, and note how these groupings are natural, nearly always reflecting the same ancestral relationships in nested hierarchies, regardless of the deeper criteria. Such patterns are revealed with a look at several phylogenetic trees of primates. Finally, teachers are encouraged to give their students lab experience collecting data from a variety of primate characteristics (skulls, chromosomes, and hemoglobin), to see for themselves the congruency of those data sets.
Education Levels:
7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, Community College
Subject:
Biological And Life Sciences, Biology, Process Skills
Resource Type:
Lesson plan
Medium:
Text/HTML
Fee Status:
Free
Beneficiary:
Students
Online provider:
Evolution and the Nature of Science Institutes (ENSI)
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