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Just one Father Christmas?

Learning objectives

Students will:
· Learn how DNA fingerprinting of Y chromosomes is used to trace male ancestry
· Reinforce their understanding of inheritance

Try the activity

• father christmas teachers notes
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• father christmas activity
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Curriculum link

9a Inheritance and selection
· Cells have nuclei which contain information that is transferred from one generation to the next
· During fertilisation genetic information from male and female parents is combined
· Some characteristics are inherited
· Offspring are similar, but not identical to, their parents
· That the fusion of male and female sex cells produces a new individual that is genetically unique

Running the activity

Show page 1 (either projected or as an OHT), which sets the scene and poses two questions. Run a quick discussion to get students thinking about the answers to the questions. You might like to point out that there are clusters of people with the surname 'Christmas' in Sussex and Essex.

Display page 2, or give each small group a photocopy of this page. Run through the technique of DNA fingerprinting that is described on this page. You might like to point out some of the problems of the research – for example, if a 'baby Christmas' were conceived as a result of a 'Mrs Christmas' having an affair, the baby would have a different Y chromosome from that expected.

There is then a choice of activities:

· Choice 1: Give each group a set of cards created from page 3. Ask students to sort the cards into 'true', 'false' and 'not sure'. The true statements are: A, C, E, H, I, J, K

· Choice 2: Organise students to play 'call my bluff'.
o Ask each group to write one correct and three incorrect definitions (distracters) of one of more of these words: nucleus, chromosome, DNA, DNA fingerprint, cell, Y chromosome, gene, cytoplasm, chromatography, enzymes. Tell groups to make the distracters as convincing as possible.
o Ask each group in turn to read their word and the four definitions. The others in the class hold up a 'true' or 'false' card after each definition. The team scores points for those wrong answers (distracters) chosen. For example,
A chosen by 2 B chosen by 10 C chosen by 0
D (correct!) chosen by 16
The team here would score 2+10+0 = 12 points for bluffing 12 people

Web links

News links

BBC news

This website gives more information about the Father Christmas story.

BBC

This article explains how genealogists are turning to DNA to trace their ancestry.

BBC

This article is about a project spanning five continents that is aiming to map the history of human migration via DNA.

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