The Colors of Kernels: Exploring Inheritance Patterns Using Corn

This article presents a modified version of a “cookbook” laboratory activity that uses colored corn kernels to address the fundamental ideas in classical genetics. The purposeful sequencing of concrete experiences with corn plant structures along with teacher questioning promotes mental engagement and scaffolds students to a deeper and more robust understanding of inheritance, zygosity, genotype and phenotype, and calculating probabilities of inherited alleles using the Punnett Square.