Genetics is one of my favorite unit and I try to make it more fun for my students and give them opportunities to use their imaginations. This Design a Species Project is great for that! Not everyone comes up with the most creative examples. I’ve had some that created blobs of different colors and I’ve had some that went crazy with dragons; but really, that part doesn’t matter. They are interacting with the information and applying what we’ve learned. With some of my GT classes, I’ve even offered extra credit for an example involving epistasis. Some of them just live for that kind of challenge!
I actually have two slightly different versions. One includes more traits for the students to come up with than the other.
I came up with an example to share with students using Purple People Eaters (of course!). It is helpful to give an idea of what they need to do. We do discuss the difference between using something as inspiration and copying.
Here is an editable Google doc. As always, please save to your own drive to edit; I don’t respond to requests to edit.