Dragons in Ms. Egan's Room!

by Angie LaFave

In Ms. Egan's 8th grade science room, class has suddenly become even more interesting than before. That's because Ms. Egan is using one of the most popular magical creatures to teach us about genetics! That's right, we're using cute little dragons! There are all different kinds of dragons – fire-breathing dragons, spiky dragons, dragons with wings, and many more! Will your dragon be purple or green? Here's how it works:

We drew letters from a cup – uppercase and lowercase. These represent dominant traits and recessive traits. Dominant traits are more powerful than recessive, so if a dominant trait is present, that trait is what you will see as a physical characteristic. After we drew the letters, we recorded the results. The gender of the dragon matched our own gender. Then we went around the room and found two partners of the opposite gender for our dragon to “mate” with.

When we were done recording the results of the mother and father, we figured out what the baby dragon would look like using this system:

(D= dominant, R= recessive)
D + R = D
R + R = R
D + D = D

As soon as we discovered what our dragon looked like, we chose one of the two baby dragons to sketch. We had to be extremely careful to include all of the features, because there were so many little details such as the amount of toes, the tongue length, the comparison of the leg lengths, and the shape of the eyes. Then we moved on to Model Magic. The Model Magic always fell apart because it hardened overnight and was very fragile.

After that, it was time to bring some color into their artificial lives – we used some paint. This also proved to be difficult, since it was near impossible to fill in all the tiny crevices and gaps. Most people weren't ashamed to admit that it looked much better on paper.

Now came the tedious part; after all, this project wasn't just a fun vacation from normal work. We had to answer complicated questions such as, What was the likelihood of your dragon acquiring the traits it did? What characteristics of your dragon were based on its gender? and Your dragon had twenty-six different traits. Compare this to real life.

Now, if you walk into Ms. Egan's room, you'll see some colorful dragons soaring around, surveying the tops of students' heads and making friends with the other decorations.

“I really like them because people worked hard on them,” said Liz Chase. “A lot of them are colorful, some look weird, but all together, they're really cool.”

“I thought it was really cool how different the dragons turned out,” Ms. Cullinan said. “I also liked how some had wings and were flying around, and the ones who didn't have wings were just hanging out on the shelves together.”

“My favorite part was that there were only two purple ones and the rest were green,” Emmasae Hallen said.

8th graders in Ms. LeClerc's class will do this project too, after The Great Switch-Up. They will transfer from Ms. LeClerc's to Ms. Egan's class.

Keep your eyes out for stray dragons, and beware! For you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup!