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My structured inquiry lesson was on inherited traits. My students were able to discover their own inherited traits and how common those traits were among the students in their class. The students are exploring their own inherited traits in pictures 1 and 2,so they could complete the activity sheet shown in picture 5. The students enjoyed observing who could roll their tongues or who had a hitchhiker’s thumb. The students had an opportunity to create a family tree using the description from a skit about a horse. They used a chart to organize the details about each horse in the skit (pictures 3 &6). After the students organized the information, they received a cut out that they needed to color. Once they colored their mystery horse the students needed describe the horse so that other could identify the name of the horse. The student than added their horse to the family tree chart on the board. The students needed to use logic to decide what the horse looked like and where the horse got its traits. I used an online program called Gizmos to assessment the students understanding of the lesson. Gizmo is a program that lets the students interactive with different situations at normally could happen in the classroom. In this case, the students were creating offspring of aliens.
I find that even my 7th graders love this segment in science. It never fails to amaze me each year how much they get excited about learning about the traints they inherit from parents and which ones are featured as dominant, etc. I must confess that sometimes I too am just as excited as the students when I find that I am the only one in the room who can roll my tongue, have hitchhiker's thumb, or have some other inherited trait that they do not possess:) This is certainly one hands on lesson that keeps them searching for other traits way after the lesson is concluded.
ReplyDeleteHeredity is my favorite part about my 7th grade curriculum. I do a similar trait comparison activity with a "Wheel o Traits". The one I use includes mid-digital hair, bent pinky fingers and a widow's peak. An old version had a bony tory which is a weird ridge of bone on the top of the mouth or under the tongue. I have huge ones under my tongue and would show the class by walking around with my mouth open. I've also had my students create aliens and their offspring. They really need to be able to manipulate the traits in order to understand how some traits can remain hidden for several generations.
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