Biology lesson plan: Probability of trait variation

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Planning notes for this lesson

Prerequisite skills to check: Genes, alleles and inherited traits (HS-LS3-1); dominant and recessive alleles; reading percentages, ratios and simple bar graphs.

Key vocabulary: allele, genotype, phenotype, dominant, recessive, Punnett square, probability, ratio, distribution, environmental factor.

Warm-up idea: Flip two coins 20 times as a class and tally heads-heads, heads-tails and tails-tails. Compare the counts to the 1:2:1 you expected, then ask: if a coin flip is like passing on one of two alleles, why didn't we get exactly 5, 10 and 5?

Exit ticket idea: Students get a cross (for example two pea plants that each carry one dominant and one recessive allele) plus a small table of actual offspring counts, predict the expected ratio with a Punnett square, compare it to the observed counts, and write two sentences explaining the difference, including one way the environment could change how a trait is expressed.

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