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Students will explore principles of heredity through an activity where they design a themed Potato Head toy set.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson explores the importance of Punnett squares in determining genetic characteristics. It uses a 3D printer to demonstrate these characteristics.

Type: Lesson Plan

The owner of newly opened Smith Valley Farms is looking to breed the next generation of top race horses. In this MEA, students will study race horse pedigrees as well as horse racing data to determine which is the best stallion to breed with a filly. Students will have to read a horse pedigree, calculate percentages based on a data table, and complete Punnett squares to determine genetic probability.

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson uses pooches to teach about pedigrees and the impact of artificial selection on individuals and populations as well as to drive home math concepts already discussed in lessons on Punnet squares.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will participate in determining traits of a monster by throwing a die. Students will develop an understanding of how genetics play a role in determining the phenotype of an individual.

Type: Lesson Plan

After students have an understanding of Punnett squares and their purpose, students will then be introduced to pedigrees. Students will be shown the purpose of pedigrees, how to read them, and how to create one. 

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will use Punnett squares to calculate the probabilities of different genotypes and phenotypes produced by genetic crosses.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson is designed to teach students how to read and interpret Punnett square with the final goal of them creating their own squares. The students will be able to determine possible genotypes and phenotypes of offspring based parent alleles.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will learn how to draw, complete, interpret, calculate the probabilities, and figure ratios for single trait crosses with complete dominance interaction.

Type: Lesson Plan

The words "create a baby" will grab the attention of any student. After studying the probabilities for genotype and phenotype using Punnett squares, this is an activity that will unify all previous tasks. The activity asks students to illustrate a baby using prior knowledge of vocabulary such as allele, trait, phenotype, genotype, dominant, and recessive.
The goal of this lesson is to take the pieces and parts of the "genetic language" that has been taught using Punnett Squares and pull everything together to show that "genetic material from mom and dad make me." The creation of a baby from single inheritance traits will reinforce why we study probability of what offspring will look like, what an allele is, and what the difference between phenotype and genotype are.
Note that incomplete dominance and polygenic traits are represented by single gene traits only for the purposes of this lesson.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will examine Gregor Mendel's laws of genetics in this lesson. Students will first explore the range of variation in human physical traits and discuss where this variation comes from. They will be then paired into groups and given the role of genetic counselors that are trying to predict the traits of offspring using traits of their parents. A toss of a coin will represent alleles for various characteristics. Students will combine dominant and recessive traits to determine the phenotype and genotype of their genetic babies. Their predicted baby will be displayed for peers to view. As an extension to this activity, the students can learn that through gene technology, parents may soon have more choices available to them: hair color, physical size, intelligence. Students canl research and evaluate how can science answer new and ethical questions.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students work collaboratively to explore genetics with SpongeBob and the Bikini Bottoms gang! The learners will take pre/post quizzes, watch a short video clip, complete a worksheet cooperatively within small groups, and rate their understanding using the learning scale included with the lesson. The activities within this lesson is best implemented towards the end of a unit on heredity and genetics.

Type: Lesson Plan

The lesson provides a hands-on activity for students to distinguish between genotype and phenotype.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson primarily addresses students discovering the concept of dominant and recessive alleles by examining how genotype determines phenotype through a structured inquiry. Punnett squares are also introduced as an extension of the primary activity.

Type: Lesson Plan

During this lesson, students will use Punnett Squares to determine the probability of an offspring's characteristics.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson, which follows the Argument Driven Inquiry model of instruction, asks students to use a Pedigree and Punnett Squares to explain Grandma's mysterious plants. Given physical traits in a small population of plants, students determine which gene is dominant and if a specific group of plants is homozygous or heterozygous.

Type: Lesson Plan

A computer simulation package called "Star Genetics" is used to generate progeny for one or two additional generations. The distribution of the phenotypes of the progeny provide data from which the parental genotypes can be inferred. The number of progeny can be chosen by the student in order to increase the student's confidence in the inference.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students must help geneticists develop a new breed of scientific explorer. Using knowledge of genetics, genotypes, and phenotypes, students must select a combination of alleles that could create people better adapted for exploring dangerous areas and other worlds. Then, students must choose which genetic alterations to apply to themselves!

Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. Click here to learn more about MEAs and how they can transform your classroom.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson students will investigate pedigrees and culminate in an activity where students create their own or imaginary pedigree.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a 7th grade Genetics lesson, primarily on genes, alleles and chromosomes. This lesson will teach dominant and recessive genes.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students simulate the process of meiosis for an alien society. The students choose physical characteristics for hair, nose and eyes corresponding to genes and then generate two alien babies. Then pictures of the parents and babies are drawn, with similarities and differences noted and explained.

Type: Lesson Plan

Lesson to help students understand how to predict genotype and phenotype probabilities using Punnet Squares and pedigrees.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a hands-on activity that will help students distinguish between genotype and phenotype.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students randomly select jelly beans (or other candy) that represent genes for several human traits such as tongue-rolling ability and eye color. Then, working in pairs (preferably of mixed gender), students randomly choose new pairs of jelly beans from those corresponding to their own genotypes. The new pairs are placed on toothpicks to represent the chromosomes of the couple's offspring. Finally, students compare genotypes and phenotypes of parents and offspring for all the "couples" in the class. In particular, they look to see if there are cases where parents and offspring share the exact same genotype and/or phenotype, and consider how the results would differ if they repeated the simulation using more than four traits.

Type: Lesson Plan

Explore the inheritance of traits using a pedigree chart in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Use Punnett squares to determine the probabilities of genotypes and phenotypes in this original tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Come investigate heredity using the American alligator to help you understand many of the terms and ideas associated with the passing on of genetic traits from parent to offspring, in this interactive tutorial. 

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn how pedigree charts can represent inheritance patterns and how genetic diseases are passed down through generations in this interactive tutorial.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn to predict the probability of offspring inheriting different traits and combinations of genes using Punnett squares. In this interactive tutorial you also review genotypes and phenotypes.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Learn how scientists use models to simplify and understand the world around us. In this interactive tutorial, you'll also explore the benefits and limitations of scientific models.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

This resource comes from the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory: DNA from the Beginning online module series. There are 41 modules located on this site all focused on DNA and organized by individual concepts. The science behind each concept is explained in each module by animations, an image gallery, video interviews, problems, biographies, and additional links. This is the 4th module in the series and it is focused on concept that some genes are dominant.

Type: Text Resource

This resource comes from the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory: DNA from the Beginning online module series. There are 41 modules located on this site all focused on DNA and organized by individual concepts. The science behind each concept is explained in each module by animations, an image gallery, video interviews, problems, biographies, and additional links. This is the 3rd module in the series and it is focused on presenting the concept that genes don't blend.

Type: Text Resource

This resource is a brief TED Ed video that covers Mendel's contributions to the field of genetics. It clearly and concisely explains genotype, phenotype, dominance, and Punnett squares in a kid-friendly way.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation