Mendel's Laws

Topic: Mendel's Laws

Objectives & Outcomes

• Students will be able to explain the law of segregation and its significance.
• Students will be able to explain the law of independent assortment and its significance.

Materials

• diagrams of pea plants
• pencils and paper for note-taking

Warm-Up

• Ask students to think of a trait or characteristic that they possess, such as eye color or hair texture.
• Have them write down their trait on a piece of paper and fold the paper so that only they can see what is written.
• Have them mix up the papers and hand one to each pair of students.
• Have each pair open the paper and read the trait without showing it to the rest of the class.
• Ask the class if they think the trait is usually inherited from only one or both parents.
• Discuss the results and what they might mean.

Direct Instruction

• Review the concept of inheritance and the idea that traits are passed on from parents to offspring.
• Introduce the concept of genes and how they contain the instructions for how an organism looks and functions.
• Discuss the law of segregation, which states that every individual possesses two alleles and only one allele is passed on to the offspring.
• Introduce the law of independent assortment, which states that the inheritance of one pair of genes is independent of inheritance of another pair.
• Use the handouts with examples to help explain the concepts.

Guided Practice

• Divide the class into small groups and give each group one of the traits discussed in class (e.g. dark hair, blue eyes).
• Have the groups generate a list of possible alleles for each parent and then determine which allele is passed on to the offspring.
• Have each group present their findings to the class and discuss any examples of segregation or independent assortment they found.

Independent Practice

• Have students work in pairs to generate a Punnett square for a hypothetical trait that is controlled by three alleles (e.g. red flowers, white flowers, and yellow flowers).
• Have students use the Punnett square to predict the probability of each offspring phenotype.
• Have students conduct a small experiment to test their predictions and report the results to the class.

Closure

• Review the main points of the lesson, including the concept of chromosomal genes and the principles of Mendel's laws.
• Ask students to share something they found interesting or surprising about the lesson.

Assessment

• Participation in class discussions and activities.
• Accuracy of completing the independent practice activity and demonstrating an understanding of the principles of Mendel's laws.
• Quality of the PowerPoint presentation and ability to effectively communicate the main points of the lesson.