Independent Assortment is crucial to understanding high school biology but is a difficult topic to teach, because it is pretty abstract. A good visual is key to teaching meiosis, chromosome genetics, and karyotypes. My students really love having this very visual and hands-on activity to help them. Use this lesson and watch a lot of light bulbs come on as your students embrace this tough concept!
Each student colors a unique karyotype and you could have the students hang up their karyotypes around the room and compare how, even if they were siblings, each karyotype will be different!
I normally use this lesson at the beginning of the mitosis and meiosis unit after a 30 minute lesson on the basics of what a chromosome is, haploid vs diploid, autosomes vs sex chromosomes, gametes vs somatic cells, and what a karyotype is.