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Vetted resources educators can use to teach the concepts and skills in this topic.
| Name |
Description |
| Dino Discoveries: | Students will discover how paleontologists study and classify dinosaurs and how evolutionary biologists study the relationships between organisms. Students will use fossil and genetic evidence to investigate evolutionary relationships between living and extinct organisms. |
| Civic Responsibility and Habitat Preservation Scratch PSA Project: | Students will create a public service announcement in Scratch about our civic responsibility to protect the habitat of a chosen endangered species. Students will use research from lesson 2 on this final part of a 3-lesson unit integrating computer science with civics. |
| Civic Responsibility and Endangered Species/Subspecies Research: | Students use a graphic organizer to guide the research of an endangered species/subspecies and evaluate the responsibility of citizens to protect their ecosystem. This is part 2 of a 3-part unit. |
| Civic Responsibility and Habitat Preservation: | This is lesson 1 of a 3-part lesson unit.
Students will watch a sample public service announcement created on Scratch about ways to protect the endangered state saltwater reptile, the loggerhead sea turtle. Students will evaluate the civic duties of citizens to protect endangered species in Florida in this integrated lesson plan and discuss how well our citizens are currently fulfilling their civic responsibilities. |
| Reconstructing Reptile Relationships - A Mesozoic Muddle: | In this Model Eliciting Activity (MEA), students will attempt to identify, draw, and describe evolutionary relationships between a collection of reptiles that lived during the Mesozoic Era and that shared a common reptilian ancestor that lived earlier - in the Paleozoic Era. The students will receive images of and facts about each of the reptiles, and will use those images and facts to prepare a cladogram – a tree-shaped diagram illustrating their hypotheses about those evolutionary relationships based on shared derived traits – and describe each of the branch points on the tree they construct.
Model Eliciting Activities, MEAs, are open-ended, interdisciplinary problem-solving activities that are meant to reveal students’ thinking about the concepts embedded in realistic situations. MEAs resemble engineering problems and encourage students to create solutions in the form of mathematical and scientific models. Students work in teams to apply their knowledge of science and mathematics to solve an open-ended problem while considering constraints and tradeoffs. Students integrate their ELA skills into MEAs as they are asked to clearly document their thought processes. MEAs follow a problem-based, student-centered approach to learning, where students are encouraged to grapple with the problem while the teacher acts as a facilitator. To learn more about MEAs visit: https://www.cpalms.org/cpalms/mea.aspx |
| Evolution in the City: | In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes new research suggesting urban life creates evolutionary changes in plants and animals. Examples of changes to an urban growing plant (the white clover) and a Leapin' Lizard are described as they evolve to suit their new environment. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. |
| SYMBIOSIS - Episode 3: Inside the Pea Aphid (Dr. Alex Wilson's Amazing Pea Aphids!): | Dr. Alex Wilson of the University of Miami is an evolutionary biologist whose research centers on symbiotic relationships. In this short animated film, she explains exactly how the bacteria aids the aphid. The film explores how scientists use what they learn to seek evolutionary patterns in nature. "" from Day's Edge Productions on Vimeo is the third of four films created with funding from the National Science Foundation. This lesson, which includes a pre-test, slide presentation, activity, and formative assessment was developed to support the learning concepts provided by Dr. Wilson's films. |
| Fish with a See-Through Head: | Students read an interesting article about a fish with a see-through head to help them think about traits that are beneficial in a certain environment (adaptation). They also consider how improved observations lead to more sophisticated science ideas. |
| Evolution and the Emergence of Species: | In this lesson, students will be learning about interesting ancient organisms found within our oceans millions of years ago. Students will complete a card sort activity to elicit their thinking of how fossils are formed as well as how species evolve. They will then discover why the fossil record does not provide evolutionary evidence for all species. |
| Lemurs: From One to Many: | The lemurs of Madagascar are an interesting species that fully demonstrate the theory of evolution. By learning about these lemurs, students revisit geologic events of Earth, the fossil record, and evolution. Students are also exposed to various types of lemurs and their environments. Using this knowledge as a spring board, students will research one type of lemur and explain how it evolved, how it was affected by natural selection, how it relates to the fossil record, and what would happen if their lemur didn't adapt. |
| Evolutionary Timelines: | This lesson is designed to be an introduction to evolution, in which students will use pictures of fossil skeletons found throughout time to come up with evolutionary timelines. This will give them a basis for understanding evolution, and they will also be introduced to such topics as vestigial structures and the Law of Superposition. |
| Kingsnakes: Can Genetic Variation be Advantageous in Changing Environments? : | This role-playing activity will visually show students how genetic variation and environmental factors contribute to evolution by natural selection and diversity of organisms. During this activity, students will represent the alleles themselves! Students will "mate" to create various genotypes and phenotypes through an engaging, fun, and content-enriched activity. Students will use scientific and mathematical skills to complete and draw conclusions. |
| The Fittest Shall Survive : | Students will act as predators, using variation in their mouth parts to collect prey. Working in groups, students will be given a set of utensils to represent the variation that exists among predators within the population. Students are then tasked with collecting as many prey items as possible in a specific time frame. |
| A Change is Going to Come!: | This lesson is about Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution through natural selection. Students will explore the theory of evolution using anecdotal imagery (evolution of technology - pagers/phones, cars, computers, watches) that will help them understand how fossil evidence in biological systems is vital to mapping out the origin and development of life through time. |
| Corals: Adapt or Die: | Will corals adapt to changing ocean conditions and survive, or will they be unable to adapt quickly enough and become extinct? Investigate what corals are, how they make a coral reef and the effects of various environmental factors (e.g., increasing water temperature, ocean acidification, addition of nutrients) using a variety of information sources - text, infographic posters, and video. Students will research, draw a conclusion, support and refute that conclusion, and write a final position statement answering the opening question. |
| Natural Selection on Beach Mice: | In this lesson, students simulate the process of natural selection and its effects on prey phenotype frequencies over multiple generations. Students are provided with four background patterns and many prey pieces in four corresponding patterns. In this way, each prey type is well-camouflaged for one corresponding background, but is less suited to the others in varying degrees. Following several rounds of natural selection simulation, students compare prey phenotype frequencies to those frequencies found using random selection. |
| Arguing for Evolution using Fossils: | Students will review fossil formation and evolutionary theory. Then students will study some intriguing fossil progressions and evaluate how well they support the theory of evolution. |
| Adaptation or Extinction: A Race to Save a Species: | Students will race across a game board, hoping their species adapts before it goes extinct. |
| How to eat, sleep and survive in the wild.: | This lesson will allow students to review adaptations and the importance of an organism's adaptations to it's environment. Students will observe examples of organisms that are adapted to various ecosystems and make inferences about how individual adaptations enable survival. They will also draw connections between adaptations and extinction. |
| Walking Whales!: | Whales had legs?! What?!!! Use this well researched and easily understood set of resources to explore the evidence for evolution in a way that is both non-threatening and engaging. Use a combination of article excerpts and videos, along with other activities, to show evidence for the clear progression of whales from land dwellers to sea masters.
This is best used, in totality, as the opener for your evolution unit. The resources provided may also support your current practices as well. |
| Can You See Me Now?: | In this lesson, students will be introduced to the relationship between environmental changes and the effects they have on various species. Polar Bears and Peppered Moths will be used as examples during the lesson. Students will engage in a hands-on simulation that will generate data for students to analyze. Students will also engage in guided reading in the content area as they read about the peppered moth and its changing environment. The concepts of adaptation, changing environments, and extinction will be evaluated throughout the lesson. |
| Bird Feet: What do they mean?: | This lesson is designed to help students to explore Natural Selection by the adaptation of bird feet to their habitat and food choices. |
| Attack of the Moth Eaters: | This is an introductory lesson that enables students to explore camouflage as an adaptation that enables organisms to escape predation. Students decorate moths and place them around the classroom to hide them from the moth eater birds. Students then get the opportunity to be the birds and search for moths hidden by their classmates. This lesson lets students explore adaptations that help the moths survive in their environment. |
| 5E Natural Selection Module: | This resource uses a variety of techniques to address the factors that contribute to natural selection. Included in the lesson is a hook to engage students, a weblab exercise, a poster activity for expression and a hands-on simulation. |
| Exploring the Theory of Evolution: | The 5E lesson addresses the theory of evolution beginning with Darwin's travels and observations. The lesson builds on the evidence and observations of Darwin by teaching how genetic variation and environmental factors affect evolution. This is then related to the ability or inability of a species to adapt with in a changing environment. |
| Animal Adaptations: | Students model using different kinds of tools that simulate bird beaks with the type of food the beaks is best suited for. Data is collected and presented in graphic form, and students also answer analysis questions and write conclusions about their findings. Students then extend their learning to other organisms' adaptations. Suggestions for research extensions is also provided. Suggested formative assessments are also included. |
| Florida Birds: Who has the Best Beak?: | In this lesson, students will recognize and explain ways an organism can be affected by genetics, environmental factors and relate how an organism can be in danger of extinction if it cannot adapt to its environment.
The teacher implements a variety of instructional components:
- Students read two e! Science News articles (can read online if internet accessible or the teacher can make copies for class ahead of time) on bird adaptations.
- Students then research a Florida coastal bird from a list provided in the lesson to create a "Vote for Me" poster. With this, students summarize their research and information gathered on a Florida coastal bird and try to convince their classmates that their bird's beak is the "best."
- Students will engage in the Battle of the Beaks hands-on activity using everyday items to simulate different bird beaks.
- Finally, students will write a response to "Who has the best beak?" using references from the science news articles, the poster presentations, and their research (website links in lesson)
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| Bird Buffet (Animal Survival): | Students learn that an animal's physical attributes, such as a bird's beak, may provide an advantage for survival in one environment but not in another. Students will participate in modeling and investigating structure and function relationships.
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| Breeding Bunnies and Flashy Fish: | Students will see how evolution works with a simulated breeding bunnies lab using red and white beans, one representing dominant alleles and the other recessive alleles. This lesson can be used in sixth grade with some minor modifications of the directions and the data being recorded. |
| Name |
Description |
| Plants, Animals Adapt to City Living: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. It describes new research suggesting urban life creates evolutionary changes in plants and animals. Examples of changes to an urban growing plant (the white clover) and a Leapin' Lizard are presented as they evolve to suit their new environment. |
| Caught in the Act: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes several fascinating examples of rapid evolution by natural selection. It explains research on three organisms, cichlids, crickets and sea urchins, that demonstrates how these creatures have quickly adapted to their changing environments. This is a very useful article for students beginning to explore the concepts of natural selection, evolution, and extinction. |
| The Man Who Rocked Biology to its Core: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article is mostly a biography of Charles Darwin, including his studies and what drove him to be a biologist. The second half of the article discusses his theory of evolution by natural selection and his influences on the development of the theory. It gives a synopsis of how natural selection operates. |
| What the Appendix is Good For: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The appendix has long been thought to be useless. However, new research suggests that the appendix actually can have a healthy function—to harbor bacteria beneficial to the immune system. This would have been vital early in humans' evolutionary history, when the chance of infection was much higher and medicine was lacking, and may still play that role for people in less developed parts of the world. |
| For Some Male Crickets, Silence Means Survival: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article discusses how crickets on two Hawaiian islands have evolved wings that make them silent in response to parasitoid flies that locate male crickets via sound (and eat them from the inside out!). The crickets on Kauai and Oahu evolved completely different silent wing types, which is evidence that these two cricket populations evolved their silent wings independently. |
| Many Human Ails are ‘Scars’ of Evolution: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The human evolution of bipedalism (walking upright) has resulted in a change in the morphology of the spine, feet, and other features of modern humans that are also present in fossils of our hominid ancestors. These changes have resulted in unintended consequences - body pains and injuries that our non-bipedal primate relatives do not experience. |
| One Plus to Wearing Stripes: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article discusses current thinking and popular hypotheses for the function of zebra stripes. A recent study indicates that zebra stripes may protect the animals from fly bites, which are both a nuisance to the animals and a means of spreading infectious fatal diseases. |
| Your Inner Neandertal: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Scientists used ancient bones to compare Neandertal DNA to that of modern humans from around the globe. The results are surprising: many of us are closer to Neandertals than previously thought. Once considered very unlikely, scientists now believe that humans and Neandertals may have interbred. |
| Surprise! Fossils in a Flash: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. In this article, scientists explore the fossil of a dead fish whose cells were perfectly preserved from 100 million years ago. The remains led to further studies of decay and fossilization. Taphonomy, the study of what happens after plants and animals die, is discussed in detail, showing how studying fossilized animals can tell us about how they evolved. |
| Tropical Species at Great Risk from Climate Change: Study: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article describes a study that suggests tropical animals are in danger of extinction due to climate change—more so than animals living in polar climates. This is because these species are already at their thermal tolerance limits, and further increases in temperature could greatly lower their fitness. |
| Between a Rock and a Wet Place: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article explains how natural selection can lead to changes in populations. Variations in body types were observed in a species of climbing goby (a fish) in Hawaii. These variations allow differential success in avoiding predators and climbing waterfalls. Depending on conditions on different islands, individuals with certain body types are more likely to thrive because their body type makes it easier for them to survive and reproduce. |
| Explainer: How Invasive Species Ratted Out the Tuatara: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This short article is about how a changing environment has lead to a near extinction of tuatara (a lizard species) in New Zealand. It discusses how invasive species—in the tuatara's case, predatory mammals—can wipe out native species that are unable to adapt. |
| Early Tyrannosaurs Would Have Feared This Predator: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article discusses how the early tyrannosaur's rise to dominance was likely delayed by the existence of a newly discovered, fiercer predator with which it competed. The new dino, Siats meekerorum, likely postponed tyrannosaur's emergence as the top predator in its ecosystem. |
| A Big Discovery About Little People: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text describes the discovery of a new species of human, nicknamed "hobbits," believed to exist as recently as 12,000 years ago. It also covers the evidence in support of the hypothesis that hobbits are truly a new human species (and not deformed Homo sapiens). |
| Evolved to Run: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text compares the bone and muscle structure of early Homo sapiens and Neandertals. It describes the ability to run long distances in one and not the other and explains how this difference may have evolved. |
| Discovering Fossils: Fossil Tools & Resources: | Fossil enthusiasts Roy Shephard and Luci Algar combined their professional skills in media and education to develop this informative and entertaining website. Designed to be educational and accessible to children, this site presents a wide variety of information about fossils found in Great Britain. The site contains a nice collection of images and diagrams; and includes a fossils guide for beginners, information on preparing fossils, a collection of fossil myths, information on ammonites, and more. The site also contains a Games & Activities section for teachers and students, a glossary of fossil terms, a neat diagram depicting the evolution of life on our planet, and even some free fossil desktop images. |
| Fish Fossil has Oldest Known Face, May Influence Evolution: | The news article describes the discovery of a placoderm (armored fish) fossil with a facial structure similar to modern vertebrates. It may represent the origin of facial structure for all modern vertebrates. This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. |
| Who Was Ida?: | This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The news article thoroughly describes a transitional primate fossil and includes artist illustrations of the animal in its environment, sidebar information describing the Messel Pit, life for animals in a maar, and how the fossil was named. The article also includes a pop-up glossary of potential problematic vocabulary. |
Vetted resources students can use to learn the concepts and skills in this topic.
Vetted resources caregivers can use to help students learn the concepts and skills in this topic.
