This coin toss activity will give students experience with tracing gene inheritance. Alone or in a group, kids toss two different coins to stand for the male and female parents. Different offspring will result based on the genes contributed from each parent. Note, this is a very similar activity to Inherited Traits—Crossing Pea Plants—A coin toss activity which requires less prep. This one is more fun and slightly more challenging as it involves co-dominance and incomplete dominance in some of the traits. Having numerous interesting but different activities to engage with the concepts can help teach and solidify student understanding.
Use this to learn and reinforce answers to questions such as:
❑ How do genes pass from parent to offspring?
❑ How can offspring differ from each other if they come from the same parents?
❑ When are dominant genes expressed?
❑ When are recessive genes expressed?
❑ What does it mean to be heterozygous for a trait?
❑ What are alleles?
Once students walk through the sequence of events, they can capture their observations using the included Lab Notes or probing questions included in the instructions.
Answer Keys and Teacher Notes address most questions and issues that might arise in this study—you shouldn’t have to do any outside research unless you want to.
Concepts Addressed
♦Traits are passed from parent to offspring
♦Each parent donates one copy of each gene to its offspring
♦Dominant genes are always expressed when the gene is present, but recessive genes are only apparent when the dominant gene is absent.
Materials Needed
Nonconsummables: felt or paper models to construct creatures (patterns included) 2 different coins per student group; cup for tossing (optional)
Prep Time Required Quite a bit! Cutting out the models takes a while, but once done they last for years. Shortcut for using a die-cut machine is included. Also you need to collect coins and cups plus copy student sheets.
Time Required This lab takes about 40 mins.
Student Sheets Scaffolded writing prompts & lab reporting
