Genetics Foldable

Some years I am very successful at teaching the students through labs and projects but some years those tried and true tactics don't work as well. This year my students need more guidance and direction, they work and recall especially well when we do activities together and the students repeat information as they write it down. This has led to many spontaneous changes in lessons this year.

Last week we attempted a class trait lab but the students were not getting the abstract connection between traits, alleles, genotypes and phenotypes when attempting lab so I decided it was time to change things up. I sat at my desk for awhile that afternoon trying to decide what to do and then I came up with an idea. I created a "Genetics Foldable."

I used a shutter fold.
Front: On one side of the foldable are the father's alleles (written in blue marker) for traits we had in a previous activity, and on the other side are the mother's alleles
Inside: The inside of each flap contains basic genetics questions, the inside center section is information about the genotype and phenotype of the offspring (written in purple because red and blue make purple)

I provided the students with the questions, I had them use their notes and previous activities to answer the questions, then we went over all of the questions answering them together and repeating the answers as we went.