Wikijunior:Life/Structure plan

Planning overview for Wikijunior:Life

The following structure is a peg in the ground. It can be added to/deleted from and re-arranged, but please use the discussion page if you want to talk about major restructuring.

I think children should be presented with the material in a child-oriented, rather than a subject-oriented way, thus the major divisions, 'Life today', 'Life in the past', and 'Why are they different?' Following these in a top-down way, anticipating what questions may be in the mind of a bright, inquisitive child, is IMO, the best way to organise the material. My first stab at laying out the territory has not entirely followed this principle, so it is up for plenty of revision. --Barry Desborough 08:52, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

Subjects

Life today
- Variety
- Linnaean classification
  - Based on most useful/universally applicable criteria
  - Produces a tree structure
  - Can change - reasons, history of change
- Species - definitions
  - Variation within species
    - Intro to inheritance & genetics
    - Intro to molecular taxonomy
  - Ring species
Life in the past
- Evidence of existence
  - Layering of different fauna/flora in geologic column
  - Similarities/differences with moderns & other layers
  - Early (pre-evolutionary) Linnaean classification
- Dating
  - History of ideas of age of earth & life
  - Modern ideas of age of earth & life
    - Geological column
    - Radiometric dating
    - Other evidence (Lake varves, dendrochronology, ice cores etc.)
    - Correlation of dating methods
Why has life changed?
- Evidence of extinctions
- History of ideas of fixity/mutability of species
- Steady v catastrophic change
- Modern theory of change
  - Ingredients of the theory
    - Deep time
    - History of changes in life forms (recap)
    - Overproduction (Malthus)
    - Inheritance (Mendel)
    - Artificial selection
    - Radiation and adaptation (Galapagos islands)
    - Natural selection of heritable variation (Wallace & Darwin)
  - Common Descent
    - DNA
      - Discovery
      - Operation & function
- The modern synthesis
  - The gene's-eye view
  - Molecular taxonomy