Dominant, recessive, Punnett square, homozygous, heterozygous, alleles, genes, genotype and phenotype…these are the words swimming around in the minds of the eighth graders.   Last week students discovered that traits are passed from one generation to the next through different inheritance patterns.  This week they are looking more closely at how these inheritance patterns affect families by creating and analyzing pedigrees.  They were presented with a case study and challenged to counsel “Greg and Olga” on their chances of having children with certain diseases.  This work is requiring some careful digging through information and I love hearing students challenge each other as they do so.