Independent Assortment is crucial to understanding high school biology but is a difficult topic to teach, because it is pretty abstract. A good visual is key to teaching meiosis, chromosome genetics, and karyotypes. My students really love having this very visual and hands-on activity to help them. Use this lesson and watch a lot of light bulbs come on as your students embrace this tough concept! Each student colors a unique karyotype and you could have the students hang up their karyotypes around the room and compare how, even if they were siblings, each karyotype will be different! I normally use this lesson at the beginning of the mitosis and meiosis unit after a 30 minute lesson on the basics of what a chromosome is, haploid vs diploid, autosomes vs sex chromosomes, gametes vs somatic cells, and what a karyotype is. This PDF file can be printed easily on 8.5”x11” paper in landscape mode. Google Slides version is included. Lesson Contents Page 1: Instructions and Grandparents’ Karyotypes Page 2: Parents’ Karyotypes and Instructions how to produce their independently assorted chromosomes in their gametes. Page 3: Large Personalized Karyotype Diagram Page 4: Questions for Students to answer after their coloring activity. Some are basic, some are more advanced and require longer responses. Page 5: Challenge Question for Advanced Students, Early Finishers, or as an additional assignment/extra credit for after you teach Meiosis. It is a great way to tie meiosis back to this activity’s concepts. I like to print this separately from the first 4 pages and hand it out separately as desired. Page 6: Teacher Tips/Answer Key Page 7: NEWLY UPDATED: Sample picture of what each student's will look like. Page 7: Terms of Use I designed this lesson to address Next Generation Science Standard* HS-LS3-2: Make and defend a claim based on evidence that inheritable genetic variations may result from: (1) new genetic combinations through meiosis, (2) viable errors occurring during replication, and/or (3) mutations caused by environmental factors. Check out my Biology Doodle Notes for some engaging resources that thoroughly explain Biology concepts in a versatile way! Would you like homework pages to help your students review what they've learned in class? Check out my Biology Homework Pages here. Contact Us! If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us on the question and answer section of my store and we will get back to you quickly! Terms of Use: Purchasing my teaching resources allows you to: * make copies for your own classes only. * place this file on your own password-protected class page or server (Blackboard, Google Drive, etc) AS LONG AS no other teacher has access to that class webpage. This resource is for you, the purchaser, alone. You are not allowed to distribute this digital resource to other teachers or post this resource on any webpage or server that is available for public view. If you and a team of teachers would like to use this resource together, please purchase additional licenses on the resource purchase page. Failure to comply with these terms of use is a copyright infringement and a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Clipart and elements found in this PDF are copyrighted and cannot be extracted and used outside of this file without permission or license. Files are partially or fully non-editable to protect the images that are copyrighted and purchased through licenses. Thanks for understanding! © Bethany Lau All Rights Reserved.
