Year 10 Science

Vegetable Family of Class 10.2	Vegetable Family of Class 10.4

At first glance you might think that this is food tech, but don’t be fooled, this is a way of learning Genetics in science.

Students have learned how traits are passed on from one generation to the next by modelling using Vegetable people.

Meet Ma and Pa:

These are their children:

Using Ma and Pa’s genotypes, students randomly selected the genotypes for each child, including the eyes, the arms, the feet and gender (either an onion or potato). 

From the genotypes, they deduced the characteristics of the child, and created the Vege-family. 

Modelling is often used in science to demonstrate concepts we cannot see.  It makes it easier to understand.

Some students comments on how this activity let them learn about genetics:

“The vegetable activity helped me understand that in heritage the offspring can get some traits such as long arms even through one of the parents didn’t appear to possess the trait their gene pool did have the trait”

“This task did help me to understand heredity better, as I could physically build up all the genes with vegetables. This task was creative and I’m looking forward to doing more pracs like this one where we can physically test or experiment with our assigned tasks.”

“It helped me understand how children's traits can appear even if the parents do not possess those traits because those traits are in the parent's genes and are expressed due to the other parent. It helped me learn about heredity as it showed how the physical features from Mr Onion and Mrs Potato were passed down to their children.”