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Evolution is often challenging for high school students to understand because it encompasses an array of interlinked processes that occur across a broad swath of biological scales. To help address this, we have developed a set of freely accessible, online, and interactive lessons that focus on the evolution of sweet garden peas from their starchy tasting ancestors. Gregor Mendel first explored the genetics of garden peas in the mid-1800s; our materials help students explore the basis of the R and r alleles from genetic, protein, cell function, artificial selection, and population genetics perspectives. These Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS)–linked lessons integrate concepts across scales and are designed to be used in a flexible order, with support provided to teachers on how to choose a sequence that meets their students’ needs. Throughout, students act as scientists as they uncover how multiple processes at disparate scales all worked together in the evolution of sweet and wrinkled peas from ancestors that were starchy and round. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teaching and understanding evolution is challenging because students must synthesize several biological processes that are traditionally taught separately. We developed a set of free online lessons and activities centered on a single evolutionary phenomenon - why deer mice have different fur colors in different subpopulations - to help high school students better understand how these different biological processes, operating at different scales, work together to influence a single organismal trait. Through scaffolded investigations, guiding questions, model building, and pointed analysis, students learn how ecology, cellular biology, molecular biology, genetic inheritance, and population genetics all work together to influence a shift in fur color over time. Using an innovative multilevel simulation, students manipulate and examine these different processes from the population level all the way down to the DNA level. In this article, we describe the lessons and materials we have developed for high school biology students. We outline the learning goals and highlight the major components of the technology and activities in each lesson. We then provide information on how to access our curricular and support materials, and conclude with user feedback from our pilot testing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]