Middle School Science: Genetics Workbook is a 176-page book that contains both instruction and student worksheets for learning about genetics. Instructors unfamiliar with the topic can be assured that answers are fully explained in the 16-page answer key included within the book. While the book is titled for middle school students, it should also work well for high schoolers new to the topic.
A suggested schedule shows 40 sessions to complete the course. The book includes material to read, worksheets, activities, experiments, questions, a project, and assessments. Students do all their writing in the book on pre-formatted pages. In addition to typical school and craft supplies like scissors and glue, students will need a coin, a die, and either PTC paper test strips or cilantro.
Topics covered include “Gregor Mendel and his experiments, dominant and recessive alleles, genotype and phenotype, Punnett squares, homozygous and heterozygous, inherited and acquired traits, and codominance and incomplete dominance” (p.7).
How Does It Teach Genetics?
Author Elly Thorsen does a great job of explaining genetics with both words and pictures to make the topic understandable for middle schoolers.
She begins by talking about Mendel’s observations of successive generations of pea plants, where he discovered that the previously accepted idea that contrasting traits from two parents (of any living thing) resulted in a blended result in their offspring was not supported by evidence. Instead, he often found that only one trait was evident in all the next generation of offspring, but then the contrasting trait would show up again in 25% of the second generation of offspring. Thorsen doesn’t immediately explain why this is so, leaving students to ponder the “mystery” for a bit. This sets the stage for many of the lessons that follow about dominant and recessive traits.
Thorsen is careful to point out that pea plants are much simpler than human beings, and several genetic factors influence human offspring. On page 92, Thorsen says, “Our exact eye color is believed to involve as many as sixteen different genes working together.”
Various activities help students apply the theoretical information, activities such as card sorting; coloring; solving puzzles; completing graphic organizers and charts; performing a taste test experiment with either PTC test strips or cilantro; and using coin tosses to determine traits of a fairy, a goblin, and a colorful monster. Several pages have students explore their own inherited and acquired traits. Students will need to involve others in their investigations that involve taste testing and inherited traits.
The course project, “Make an Organism,” has students choose an actual, fictional, or imaginative character for which they will develop a list of traits, decide which are dominant, and then determine possible traits of their offspring. They will also make a digital, physical, or drawn model of their organism.
To ensure that students understand key concepts, the lessons have them answer questions on several pages, use pre-formatted vocabulary cards on which they write definitions and draw illustrations, and write several paragraph-long responses, such as a paragraph summarizing Mendel’s observations on page 19.
The lessons sometimes have playful illustrations and imaginative aspects, such as determining the genetics of a goblin and coloring three heterozygous unicorns.
A section titled Review Materials follows the lessons. It includes instructions and cards for a genetics vocabulary review game, a two-page review, two more genetics graphic organizers to complete, and a genetics station with cards that can be used for individual review or group activities. Following this section is a 30-question test, suggestions for further study, more activities and research ideas, a glossary, and the answer key.
Summary
Middle School Science: Genetics Workbook is self-contained and easy to use, while it also provides serious academic content in an entertaining format.
