This SciShow video tells the story of Sue the T-Rex and the tricky task of determining the sex of fossilized animals using evidence.
Striped Dolphins have 3 types of bodies! [Gender Showcase, K-5]
Striped Dolphins
Striped dolphins have three types of bodies we say look like girl bodies, like boy bodies, and bodies that look like both!
The same is true of Bowhead Whales and Fin Whales.
Updated from: “All Genders Are Perfectly Natural” (K-5) poster by Reflection Press, from the Gender Now Coloring Book © 2011.
Spotted red hyena boys and girls look and act ALMOST the same even if you look closely. [Gender Showcase, K-5)
Spotted Red Hyena
The boys and the girls look AND act so much alike, it can be difficult to tell them apart, even if you look closely. One girl hyena usually is the strongest hyena in the family, and she leads the pack.
Updated from: “All Genders Are Perfectly Natural” (K-5) poster by Reflection Press, from the Gender Now Coloring Book © 2011.
Kangaroos, quokkas, and wallabies have 3 types of bodies: girl, boy, and both! [Gender Showcase, K-5]
Kangaroos
Many Red and Gray Kangaroos, Euros, Tammar Wallabies, and Quokkas have bodies we say look like girl bodies, boy bodies, and bodies that look a little bit like both. In all their bodies, they have a pouch. That way, the Joey can ride in the mama or papa’s pouch. Baby kangaroos are called Joeys. Girl kangaroos often adopt another kangaroo’s baby, just like wolves, elephants, and fathead minnows do!
Caption: A quokka and a baby quokka in its pouch.
A wallaby sits alone in a clearing in the forest.
Updated from: “All Genders Are Perfectly Natural” (K-5) poster by Reflection Press, from the Gender Now Coloring Book © 2011.
Most boy bighorn sheep live together, but some boy sheep act like and live with the girl sheep. [Gender Showcase, K-5]
Big Horn Sheep
Some of the boy Big Horn Sheep, while looking like the other boy sheep, will act much more like the girls. The other boy sheep still treat the boy sheep like a boy sheep. Some scientists think this improves friendship, because most of the year, the boy sheep live together separate from the girl sheep.
Updated from: “All Genders Are Perfectly Natural” (K-5) poster by Reflection Press, from the Gender Now Coloring Book © 2011.
White-tailed deer have 5 types of bodies! [Gender Showcase, K-5]
White-Tailed Deer
The boy and girl White-Tailed Deer often look like each other, even though they act differently! These deer have 5 different bodies that have different mixes of boy and girl-looking parts, and how much they look like a boy or a girl’s. Black-Tailed, Red-Tailed, Swamp, Sika and Roe Deer, Moose and Elk all have more than just boy-looking and girl-looking bodies.
A roe deer in the snow.
An elk lifting its head in a dry field, while other elk eat with heads lowered.
Two sika deer, one standing, one sitting, in the woods.
A moose lies down in a field.
Updated from: “All Genders Are Perfectly Natural” (K-5) poster by Reflection Press, from the Gender Now Coloring Book © 2011.
Bats do not have boy/girl ways to act or look, but create long-lasting families that care most about helping each other be strong. [Gender Showcase, K-5]
Bats
Bats create long-lasting families where everyone takes care of each other. They do not have boy/girl ways to act or look. Bats are most concerned with everyone being strong.
A bat with brown skin sticks out its pink tongue while hanging upside-down from a tree branch against a background of green leaves.
A bat with brown skin spreads its wings while it hangs from upside-down a tree branch against a white background.
White-throated sparrows have 2 body types and 4 genders! [Gender Showcase, K-5]
White-Throated Sparrow
These birds have boy bodies that act in two different ways and girl bodies that act in two different ways. This means they have four genders and two body types!
Caption: Zonotrichia albicollis #ML63894671. Image credit (C) 2015 Keenan Yakola, taken on Seal Island, ME (Asset available at https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/63894671)
If the girl clown fish leaves the boy clown fish, the boy clownfish changes his body into a girl's! [Gender Showcase, K-5]
Clown Fish
The girl Clown Fish body is larger than the boy body. And if the girl goes away and leaves the boy Clown Fish with the little fishes, he changes his body into a girl Clown Fish.
Beluga whales have three body types: boy bodies, girl bodies, and boy-and-girl bodies. Oh whale! [Gender Showcase, K-5]
Beluga whales
Beluga whales have three body types: boy bodies, girl bodies, and boy-and-girl bodies. Oh whale!
Boy sea horses get pregnant and give birth to the babies from their pouch. [Gender Showcase, K-5]
Sea Horses
Boy Sea Horses have a pouch where the girl Sea Horse places the fertilized Sea Horse eggs. This allows the boy to be pregnant and care for the growing babies. This daddy carries the babies until they are ready to be born.
This page under construction - "whale" have updates soon!
K-5 Gender Showcase
We are currently updating this popular resource to include more teacher guidance. Whale see you again soon!
Creating Cell Biology Courses That Are Inclusive for People Who Are Intersex and/or Have Queer Genders
In this blog post, biology education researchers Sarah L. Eddy and Aramati Casper describe how to support intersex and queer students through language choices and biologically accurate content.
Ancient Skeletal Remains: Sex, Gender, And Archaeology
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.
American Psychological Association's Four-Lesson Unit on Gender
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
Educational Jewelry of Queer Animals at San Diego Pride 2023!
How cool is this educational jewelry that @the_fish_nerd has created! Her photos show linked medallions illustrated with non-binary side-blotched lizards, transgender moray eels, and asexual condors. Thanks for sharing! - RXS
Gender Spectrum Online Professional's Symposium 2023: Adapting for Gender-Inclusive Biology Workshop
Sex and gender are binaries? Sorry, that's a scientific falsehood
In this SF Chronicle piece, Ash Zemenick discusses evidence for biological sex as a continuum rather than a binary. They argue that humans whose chromosomes, gametes, or hormones do not fit into a binary are common and that it is more useful to view them as a form of diversity rather than as an exception to a rule.
Reebops Nursery (gender-inclusive Genetics of independent assortment)
Gender-inclusive simulation of independent assortment for a genetics or evolution lesson. Adapted from slides created by Laura Funk (staff profile page) by modifying “mom” to egg-giver and “dad” to sperm-giver. Can also serve as model for discussion about mutations, epigenetics, evolution, chromosomes, alleles, nondisjunction. See also Teach.Genetics.Utah.edu's paper-based activities. See steps below and the questions for the assessment at the end. (Originally published here in 3/17/21.)
NGSS Works towards HS-LS3-1. Follow up with meiosis and HS-LS3-2.
Step 1: Flip a coin and highlight the capital or lowercase letter for that row.
Step 2: Combine the results from Step 1 to create a genotype (two letters).
Step 3: Use the third slide to decode the phenotype.
Step 4: Build the reebop based on the phenotype.
Assessment: Answer the questions in the Google Form.
0. Attach completed Reebops Nursery from your Drive.
1. Name your Reebop
2. What do you think each letter represents in the model?
3. What do you think combining the letters represents in the model?
4. All models are wrong. Some models are useful. What are some things missing from this model? List as many as you can think of.
5. Gametes (egg & sperm cells) contain 1 pair of chromosomes (n = haploid), the other body cells contain 2 pairs of chromosomes (2n=diploid). Is your baby reebop haploid or diploid?
Generating a framework for gender and sexual diversity-inclusive STEM education
Generating a framework for gender and sexual diversity-inclusive STEM education
Authors: Gary William Wright, Cesar Delgado
Published in: Science Education (Feb 5, 2023) at https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21786
Abstract
Students who identify as LGBTQ continue to report feelings of being unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. Access to a gender and sexual diversity (GSD)-inclusive curriculum and supportive teachers may positively improve the school climate for LGBTQ students, but these supports are often not included in STEM classrooms. One response is to ensure that STEM teachers are prepared to integrate GSD-inclusive STEM teaching into their classrooms. This review systematically analyzed the literature on supporting and affirming GSD in K-12 and higher education STEM education contexts. The 81 selected studies were qualitatively analyzed using inductive thematic analysis and epistemic network analysis, and the findings showed that GSD-inclusive STEM education literature coheres around six highly related constructs: Heteronormativity, Social Justice, Epistemic Knowledge of Science and Inquiry, Identity, Embodiment, and GSD language. Identifying these constructs, and the connections among them, led to the generation of an operational framework of GSD-inclusive STEM teaching that can inform and guide STEM teacher education programs and STEM teacher professional development to develop STEM educators' equity literacy around GSD to foster bias-free, equitable, inclusive STEM classrooms.