Week of 12/6

On Monday, students worked in small groups to practice using Punnett squares. On Tuesday, students participated in the "Face Lab." In this lab, students had to play the role of parents and flip coins in order to determine which traits would be passed on to their "child." This lab reinforced how alleles are passed from parents to offspring and how probability (in our case, flipping a coin) plays a major role in genetics. Students had to use the results from their coin flips to draw a picture what their "child" would look like. I will be hanging up these lovely (or not so lovely, in some cases) pictures next week. This week, we also discussed how certain traits were located on the X chromosome and that sex chromosomes determine our gender (XX for females, and XY for males). We used this knowledge to learn how to do X-linked Punnett squares. We spent time practicing these Punnett squares in small groups on Friday. Next week we will discuss a few common genetic disorders and take our Chapter 5 test (on Thursday).