Fertility Research in Beef Cattle

• This is an excellent resource for studies of agriculture and agricultural research within the year 9 science curriculum.
• In the Science Inquiry Skills strand the unit's spreadsheets, data placemats, and interpretation activities are highly supportive of the content description about analysing patterns and trends in data, including describing relationships between variables and identifying inconsistencies. The assessment task connects closely with the content description referring to communicating scientific ideas and information for a particular purpose, including constructing evidence-based arguments and using appropriate scientific language, conventions and representations.
• In the Science as a Human Endeavour stand, the unit's coverage of the technologies used to collect and display data is useful for the content description about advances in scientific understanding often relying on developments in technology.
• Many of the data activities in the unit connect with the mathematics curriculum. They draw upon statistical knowledge developed in earlier years of schooling and provide a practical and engaging application of knowledge and skill in relative to data interpretation and display.
• The focus on investigating and evaluating data and information using data spreadsheets is of considerable value for the general capability of information and communication technology.
• In relation to the Science Understanding strand, the unit of work provides opportunities for further exploration of the Biological sciences content description referring to multi-cellular organisms relying on coordinated and interdependent internal systems to respond to changes to their environment. The multi-cellular organisms in the unit are cattle and the internal systems are the digestive and reproductive systems.

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