Mendel, Peas, and Punnett Squares - A TED-Ed Lesson

Genetics and the passing of traits from parents to children is one of the topics in middle school  and high school science that I've often seen students take a personal interest in learning. In the following TED-Ed lesson How Mendel's Pea Plants Helped Us Understand Genetics, students receive a crash course in heredity, genotypes, and punnett squares through the story of Mendel and his study of peas. The video is embedded below. The full lesson with questions is available here.

Into the Outdoors - Videos and Lesson Plans About Nature

Into the Outdoors is a new site featuring videos and lesson plans about a wide variety of topics related to nature. The site is divided into six main topic areas; life science, farm science, social science, physical science, environmental science, and natural resources science. Each primary topic area includes a handful of sub-topics. Click on any sub-topic to find videos, lesson plans, and links to additional resources. Below I've embedded two videos from the Life Science section.



Applications for Education
In the email that I received from Into the Outdoors they mentioned that one of their purposes is to spark students' interest in learning about nature and getting outside to learn. In looking at a few of the lessons, I can see how you could modify them to use on local walking field trips.