Express yourself: using modeling clay as a didactic resource for teaching genetics in high school

Abstract: The Institutional Program for Teaching Initiation Scholarships (PIBID) is a brazilian policy for improving  teaching quality. Students and teachers involved experience a form of supervised internship that allows the experience of pedagogical praxis. Studying of the transmission of hereditary characteristics and relationships of dominance and recessivity between alleles are complex abstract concepts that demand the use of appropriate didactic resources. In this context, PIBID scholarship holders, within the Biology area’s scope, were diagnosed through the observation in the third year classes of the public school in Brazil, the need to use an alternative methodology that playfully approached these concepts. In the present study, the aim was to produce a fictitious species made with modeling clay, so that, from the "mating" of this individuals, students would observe the transmission of characteristics and determine the genotypes and phenotypes of the “offspring”. The learning was assessed using a a questionnaire that was applied before and after the activity. The questionnaire assessed students' understanding of the concepts of genotype and phenotype, dominance and recessivity, homozygous and heterozygous, parental and filial generation, the understanding of Mendel's experimental methods, and the ability to contextualize the content. In general, the average percentage of students who knew how to define the concept correctly increased, and the percentage of students who did not know how to answer decreased for most questions. The results showed an  improvement in the understanding of genetic concepts by students. We also observed an improvement in writing expressing and scientifica experimental method comprehension.