Fun introduction to genetics activity genetic traits

Description

Science teachers, are you looking for a way to introduce the concept of genetics and inheritable traits? This introduction to genetics activity is a great way to explore physical characteristics and the concept of dominant and recessive traits.

The study of genetics is such an interesting topic. Grasp your students’ attention at the start with this great classroom activity to explore inheritance patterns, family traits, and recessive and dominant genes.

What does the genetics activity involve?

• In this genetics activity, student pairs ‘make babies’ and determine the genetic traits their offspring will have and explore different traits.
• One student flips a coin as the ‘male’ parent, and the other flips the coin as the ‘female’ parent for each trait listed e.g. eye color, hair color, earlobe attachment.
• Students determine which of the common traits their offspring will have based on the chart.
• They then take this genetic information and draw a picture of what their offspring would look like.

If you wanted, you could then discuss the idea of homozygous and heterozygous genotypes and have students go back to identify the genotypes of each of the traits by writing for example, TT or Tt or tt next to each one. This will also get students to consider their own genotype for certain traits and consider where they got each of their own traits from.

This genetics lesson is a great way to introduce the concept of recessive alleles, dominant allele, resultant phenotype and lead into phenotype ratios.

This is the perfect way to introduce a genetics unit for middle schoolers or high school students.

Add this great resource to your lesson plan now!

This worksheet works very well before this Punnett Squares worksheet which provides additional information to build an understanding of genotypes and phenotypes.