Dragon Genetics – Understanding Inheritance

HI,

I am planning on using these worksheets with some of my advanced students in middle school. DO you have the answer key to the worksheets?

I used a similar activity - instead of popsicle sticks - cut strips of paper- pairs of homologous chromosomes (pink for maternal set and blue for paternal set of homologous chromosomes); on the 7th set XX for female and XY for male - the X chromosome allele = H for Horn and h for hornless - we kept track of how many males vs female expected; and how many males expected hornless if the females all were heterozygous for Horned and all male parents started out H (horned). It worked well to show hornless males occurred more often in a large population - and that the female X/h chromosome is passed to the male offspring. Good lead in to natural selection.
Students worked in pairs (mom and dad) placing all chromosomes face down on the desk and choosing one of each pair to form the zygote.

> Dear Angie,
>
> The key here is to remember that the students work in pairs. One is the
> mom and one is the dad. The mom and dad will each determine their
> genotype for each gene by examining the alleles on the two sides of the
> green popsicle stick and each of the other popsicle sticks. This is the
> information that will go under mom and dad genotypes. Once these
> columns are filled out for the green popsicle stick, the mom and dad
> will each "randomly drop his or her stick on the table". The allele
> that is up on the mom's dropped popsicle stick will be the allele in the
> egg, and the allele that is up on the dad's dropped popsicle stick will
> be the allele in the sperm. The combination of the alleles in the egg
> and sperm give the genetic makeup of the baby, which determines the
> phenotypic trait in the baby.
>
> I hope this helps,
> Ingrid
>