Science Wednesday - Tree of Genetic Traits

Today's science lesson was about genetic traits. We learned the basics about genes, DNA, and chromosomes from good 'ol Bill Nye. He is a personal hero of many of our students, so seeing "Bill Nye DVD" on the daily schedule brought many cheers and jumping around. Yay, science!

The follow-up lesson was fun and hands-on. The main learning points were:

Traits are observable characteristics we inherit from our parents. 

An individual will have many traits they share in common with others.

An individual's overall combination of traits make them unique.

Some traits are more common in a population than others.

We talked about the project that is due TOMORROW (Thursday) - a drawing project that shows hair and eye color of your student, any siblings your student has, parents, and both sets of grandparents.

Then I mentioned three additional traits that we would checking for this morning - earlobes (free or attached), PTC tasting, and tongue rolling. 

FYI about PTC paper - PTC is a harmless chemical that tastes bitter to those who can taste. For those who cannot taste it, the paper just tastes like paper!

Each child filled out a leaf with their information and placed it on the appropriate spot on the tree.

The tree forms a visual representation of the frequency of trait combinations within the group. In our case, we are collecting data from the two first and second grade classes, the kindergarten class, and (we hope) one or more classes from the middle school. 

Here is a branch from our class.