Genetics of Blood Disorders

If you are doing a unit on blood and the circulatory system, you may want to include a review of how to do genetics crosses using Punnett squares.

For the blood unit, I start with the anatomy of blood - erythrocytes, leukocytes, and platelets. Students progess through the slides, which includes the phenomenon of a child with Cooley's anemia (Beta-thalassemia).

Students then practice (review) how to predict the outcome of crosses, where parents have sickle cell disease, Beta-thalassemia, and Von Willebrand disease. This simple worksheet has students set up the crosses and predict outcomes.

Hemophilia is included later, since it involves sex-linkage. Eventually, students learn the genetics of blood typing.

Blood typing is also done separately, when students learn about antigens.