Notes on the story – Life is a relay race

Life is a relay race

Links to the story	Key Stage 2 and 3 programmes of study	Possible learning outcomes	Big ideas
Life is a relay race	heredity as the process by which genetic information is transmitted from one generation to the next (KS3)	Know that a genome is a store of information Know that an identical copy of the genome exists in every cell of an organism Appreciate that genetic information is transmitted from one generation to the next because of the inheritance of genomes	adventures in time and in space pass on information

This story introduces the big idea that the genome contains information and it is this information that is transferred from parents to offspring and between the different stages of the life cycle. Life is a relay race and the baton that is passed on is information. This is an important point, which will be explored further in future stories. [Later we will discover that the mother also passes on the machinery needed to select, read and use the information, but this is a good place to start.]