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In this lesson for high school life sciences, students explore case studies of human remains that have challenged scientists’ ideas about how gender and sex operated in ancient times to help us better understand how gender, sex, and sexuality change our bodies and our stories in the present day.
Lewis Steller created this lesson as part of the Science Friday Educator Collaborative.
This unit for high school psychology classes covers four topics:
Gender as a Biopsychosocial Construct
Cultural and Historical Considerations about Gender
The Importance of Pronouns
Seeking Support at School
Alex Maes created this investigation which includes a variety of videos and infographics also featured on this website. Two versions are available, one more scaffolded than the other.
Alex writes:
I've made a lesson like this too using lots of resources from genderinclusivebiology.com, as well, as some of my own. I have an individual, less scaffolded version I do with my IB juniors, and a more scaffolded version with whole class, individual, and small group components I did with my freshman! Feel free to use!
Edit (6/8/23): Thank you to Wayne for noting the lesson materials include diagrams including humans in a chart entitled hermaphrodites. It is important to discuss with students how language changes when describing human versus non-human species because of how “hermaphrodite” was historically used as a pejorative to stigmatize people. Wayne provided the link embedded in the disclaimer most frequently seen on related GIB posts: Editor’s note: The term "hermaphrodite" is appropriate for referring to non-human animals with sex characteristics that do not fit typical binary notions of male or female bodies. For humans, “intersex” is the appropriate term—learn more here! (-RXS)
Elizabeth Duthinh, a physician and high school teacher, developed these inclusive activity and practice problem sets covering the Monohybrid Cross, Dihybrid Cross, X-linked Traits, Non-Mendelian Inheritance, and the PTC taste lab.
Elizabeth writes:
These problem sets and PTC tasting lab are adapted to cover Mendelian genetics without presuming gender based on chromosomes and without assuming families and individuals are cisgender or heterosexual. We suggest pairing the X-linked characteristics problem set with the video What it's Like to be Intersex by InterACT and a short introduction to the SRY region of the Y chromosome.
This highly accessible lesson was designed by Sabrina Kayed for Grade 11 Biology. The lesson is designed to move students’ understanding of biological sex beyond the simplistic binary model and introduce them to the idea of sex as a spectrum.
Written by teacher for teachers, Teaching about Gender Diversity is an edited collection of interdisciplinary lesson plans that provides K–12 teachers with the tools to implement gender-inclusive practices into their curriculum and talk to their students about gender and sex. Edited by Susan W. Woolley and Lee Airton, this engaging collection features teachers' perspectives on teaching about gender from across North America. Divided into three sections dedicated to the elementary, middle, and secondary grade levels, this practical resource provides lessons for a variety of subject areas, including English language arts, STEM, and health and physical education. To view more titles in Education, visit canadianscholars.ca.
In this blog post, Gender-Inclusive Biology contributor Lewis Maday-Travis shares a presentation he created to wrap-up a unit on the skeletal system. The presentation focuses on the science of the intersex experience and nonbinary identity, both of which are supported by scientific research yet frequently erased in public discourse.
Image shows nine animals species that exhibit sexual dimorphism or unique reproductive strategies: elephant seals, seahorses, mallad ducks, Indian peafowl, Mormon cricket, honey bee, magnificent riflebird, clownfish, and slipper limpet.
In this lesson, students learn briefly about the reproductive strategies nine different animal species. Student use a tally to track what strategies are most common - for example, male competition, female mate choice. More unique patterns like sex-changing clownfish and touch-mediated sex development are included within the nine species.
When I taught this lesson, students learned about each species through short video recordings of teachers in our school describing the species. For more general use, I changed the lesson as posted on this website to have students do online research instead of watching the videos.
This is a partial list of root words that occur in both LGBTQIA issues and STEM content. Each root word has its own poster. This is a tool to help teachers integrate gender-inclusive themes into their teaching.
You might ask students to speculate on the meaning of a new science word like “homozygous” based on the meaning of the familiar word “homosexual”. Or you might have students write formal definitions of “transgender” and “cisgender” to apply their vocabulary after a lesson on cis- and trans-isomers. By taking a quick moment to make the connection, you can improve student literacy and affirm diverse identities in your classroom.
Holiday preparations, pronoun practice, and more!
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