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Understanding Genetic Facts using Translucent Colored Flowers
These media use colored transparent sheets. Budiman, S.Pd., M.Pd., an IPA teacher at SMPN 1 Tellilempoe, Sidrap made the media by cutting the sheets in the shape of sunflowers. He called the media "Bunga Terawang Warna" or translucent colored flowers. The media were used when students learned cross-breeding in Basic Competency 2.2 about hereditary characteristics in organisms, in the first semester of class IX. Mr. Budiman used the media to replace the Genetic Buttons that he thought did not give students real learning experience.
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The translucent colored flowers helped students to understand more about genetic facts, a concept that is hard to understand.
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AT the beginning of this lesson, I exposed my students to various phenomena related to hereditary characteristics that are familiar to them. I did this by showing them a family tree and a photo of a father, a mother and their 3 children. One of the children had different physical features compared to the parents and the siblings. I then asked them a critical question as how this thing could happen.
To answer the question, I asked my students to work in group and do 'monohybrid crossing' experiment for dominant and intermediate crossing. I facilitated them using the translucent colored flowers. This activity consisted of two parts. In the first part dominant crossing experiment was done, while the intermediate crossing experiment was done in the second part. Red and white flowers were used for dominant crossing, while red and yellow flowers were used for intermediate crossing.
We used these rules for the media: the flower cutouts represented one character/gene (haploid) of a plant, based on the colors (e.g. red flower carried the red character, white flower carried white, etc);
(1)The flower cutouts represented one character/gene (haploid) of a plant, based on the colors (e.g. red flower carried the red character, white flower carried white, etc);
(2) the flower cutouts were to be matched after they were mixed at random. I then guided my students to examine each pair, their color assimilation, by putting the transparent sheets against a light source. Each of the combined colors was considered the hereditary character.
And since it was made from a crossing, the heredity (diploid) is a combination of different flowers which had their own character (haploid + haploid = diploid) By using these media, students were able to get a good understanding of the principles of hereditary characteristics. This was much better than using the Genetic Buttons. This low cost media also introduced students to real life example of genetic crossing.
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Sharing Innovation in Junior Secondary Education
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Edition 11 / September 2011
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