This lesson guides students to examine the potential benefits, risks, and ethical concerns of designer drugs. Students begin by reading an article titled Ethical Issues in Pharmacogenetics by Carol Isaacson Barash, an ActionBioscience.org original article. Next they will read information on the National Human Genome Research Institute on Pharmacogenetics: Frequently Asked Questions about Pharmacogenomics. Instructors can then use the lesson to guide students through shorter activities and/or one main activity. The smaller activities involve students in describing the research behind the issue, making it accessible to a less-informed audience, and in exploring the ethical issues outlined in the article to support various points of view. The larger activity is for upper level students to gather evidence to support particular perspectives so that they can present different views about the ownership of human DNA information.

This activity is a field activity where students will perform various water quality tests to determine the types of organisms that live in a local pond and stream, and the characteristics that those aquatic environments seem to have that the organisms favor.

This activity is a classroom lab making coolers to investigate which type of material is the best insulator.

This activity is a field investigation where students gather data to understand phenological changes.

This activity is an inquiry based activity where students investigate how the force that causes rockets to go into space is similar to air being released from a balloon.

Spreadsheets across the Curriculum module. Students use a spreadsheet to build a two-way table of drug level vs. time and elimination rate with parameters dosage interval and amount.

This activity is a lab investigation/teacher directed inquiry, in which a student discovers the pathway of an electric current from a battery source, through a light bulb's inner structure, and then back to the battery source to complete a simple circuit.

This activity is a field investigation where students gather leaves and make observation about the leaves and based on their data determine which leaves are the most common where they live.

This is an out of class exercise that allows students to explore biological molecules that contain heme like molecules with metals bound in them. The properties of these molecules give them different colors and functions, but all are related evolutionarily.

This hands on lab helps explain why the color of our sky/upper atmosphere appears blue in color. Students will be able to simulate how light from the sun is scattered by our atmosphere to create blue light.

This activity is an in-class experiment where students predict, observe, and summarize what will happen when ice melts in a cup of water.

This is a discrepant event that can be used to help students understand applications of the momentum-impulse theorem. Students are first asked to predict and hypothesize what will happen when an egg is thrown into a sheet. After sharing predictions and hypotheses, a volunteer student will throw the egg into the sheet. Other students make observations and craft explanations of what happened to explain why the egg does not break when it hits the sheet but does break if thrown at a wall. Students will then be asked a series of guiding questions to help them challenge misconceptions and sharpen their understanding of momentum and impulse.

A town board based classroom scenario where students decide what to do with a parcel of land on the shoreline of a lake. Various interested parties try to purchase, but must answer town board questions in the process. Real issues of land-use, resource allocation, ethics, planning, and impacts.

This activity is where students build and use an oscilliscope exploring with sound and sound waves.

This series of questions before instruction, in-class peer instruction, and post-instruction allow students to iterate and improve their understanding of work incrementally.

This activity is a lab investigation where students design an experiment to create rich soil using organic matter, dirt, newspaper and red worms.

This activity is a lab intended to help students learn to setup an investigation with worms to learn about experimental design and data collection.

This activity is a field investigation where students learn about scientific sampling, earthworms as an invasive species, and collect data on earthworm populations using three sampling methods.

This activity is a creative writing assignment in which first graders create poetry from scientific information about dragonflies.