Many years ago, and by many I mean almost 4, I wrote a piece about using Minecraft to explore sheep wool genetics. This was based on a meeting outside of school with several elementary age students. Last spring I was able to do a more extensive lesson in a 7th grade Science class. It was an ungraded enrichment activity for students to reinforce what they had learned about Mendelian genetics.

• The world was built by a student on her own Minecraft account, saved and imported into MinecraftEdu.
• In the spirit of pair programming, two students played on one computer.
• Below is my rough lesson outline.
• Here is a link to an article, (including a video) written for our school newsletter and website.

Planning and Lesson

Genetics Terms: 

• Parental P1, F1, F2, F3, offspring
• Cross, crossing
• Phenotype, genotype, (genes, alleles)
• Dominant, recessive
• Pure (true) breeding,
• Mendelian inheritance
• Incomplete dominance
• Codominance
• Mutation? Randomly appearing new phenotype
• 3:1 ratio- probability

Minecraft skills/knowledge:

• 10 min. for sheep to grow to adulthood and become “fertile” so to speak.
• Mate sheep
• Build fences- to pen in progeny and separate from adults.
• Create signs or write info/books
• ?

• Students were required to clearly identify by signage within the game;
  • P1, F1, F2 etc…
  • Documentation of crosses being performed
  • Anything else they can think of

Procedures and Questions to Guide Experimentation:

Each pair of students assigned one phenotype color sheep:

1. Is the trait pure (true) breeding? They figure out what to test? How many times?

• Yes→ What is the genotype? BB or bb, for brown wool.
• No→ Is there an inheritance pattern? What is the probability of each F1 phenotype? Could it be true breeding and just a mutation? Depends…
  • If 100 crosses and get 1 new phenotype→ indicative of what?
  • Is that phenotype dominant over the P phenotype

2. Cross two true breeding strains (colors of wool). Is there dominance?

• If so, all F1 should be the same color as one parent (the dominant parent).
• If all F1 are one color- what is the genotypye of F1?
  • All F1 are heterozygous if mendelian
• Don’t give Q3. Instead, Ask “What is a logical next question and how would you test this?”

3. What happens when cross two potentially heterozygous F1?

• Does the recessive phenotype reappear?
  • What is the ratio of dominant to recessive phenotypes in F2?
  • If 3:1 then follows mendelian inheritance patterns.

4. Incomplete dominance/blended or codominant/both phenotypes, blotchy.

5. Test crosses:

• Cross  F2 (recessive- homozygous recessive) x F1 (heterozygous)
  • If Mendelian genetics what should be probability? 1:1 (50 Bb: 50 bb)
• Cross F2 (recessive- homozygous recessive) x F2 (homozygous)
  • Should be 100% recessive phenotype.