Class began with a “pop quiz” – an entry task designed to serve multiple purposes. First, students were tasked with thinking about whether they thought there was a relationship between males, females, dominant alleles, and recessive alleles. After some private think/write time, students followed the structured partner talk protocol, sharing their understanding and then engaging in a respectful debate if needed. After a class share-out that included a review of key unit vocabulary terms, students learned that although dominant and recessive alleles are not linked to a particular parent, there are examples of sex-linked conditions like color-blindness. We finished with an activity in which students used the purple books to model the process of meiosis. Many students used Play-Doh and a few were able to create stop-motion videos of the process using the cell phones. Slides for the lesson can be viewed here.
The Art of Science 