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Students have been continuing their understanding of Mendelian inheritance with Punnett Squares this week.
Students are working on different scenarios of crosses in organisms to visualize what outcome for the offspring might occur.  Students are demonstrating their understanding very nicely.
Today, students started exploring how some traits are carried only on the X chromosome.  We will explore how these traits are not always dominant and how, in fact, they do appear.  This will be a nice background for the students as we getting closer to our Genetics Project, which we will be initiating in about a week and a half.

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I hope everyone had a nice break!  This week flew by as we only had 3 days together.  On Wednesday, students were welcomed back with a review over the material they had learned about prior to the break.  I was impressed with how much the students retained over the 2 weeks off.  On Thursday, the 7th graders reenacted Gregor Mendel's experiments by crossing given genotypes to see what the outcome would be. Students completed a checkpoint on Friday.  This inclass assignment was to make sure students felt comfortable and confident with the material in this unit so far.  Students were able to utilize their textbook and notes for the checkpoint.
Next week, students will discover how to use a Punnett Square using their knowledge of Mendel to identify the types of offspring in a crossed pair.