Evolution

Note that this page links from both 7th grade and high school. Please make sure you check that an activity is appropriate for your grade level. Students at both levels struggle to understand natural selection.

Great case studies and simulations of evolution at the gene level [|Evo Ed]

Amazing 3 d visualizations of bones [|Digital Morphology]

Have a vertebrate paleontologist come to your site! Right now you can ask questions, the outreach should be up and running by 12/13 [|Vertbrate paleonologist ambasadors]

The 3/8/13 7th Grade DAIT team created a lesson on helping kids put Earth History events on a timeline. This is the event list for the lesson. Here are some strips to cut out and use for the Engage part of the lesson.. Here is a concept map for the unit on Earth history.

Here is a lesson that creates a timeline on a strip of adding machine tape. [|adding machine tape timeline]

A life history web quest [|Ron's web quest] A lesson plan that uses Darwin's data to create a cladogram of Mockingbirds on the Galapagos [|mapping mockingbirds]

A lesson that puts students in the role of paleontologists trying to make inferences with limited information is at [|the great fossil find]

The CA EEI has three state approved curriculum units on evolution that can be found at [|CA Education and the Environmant Initiative] You need to create a log-in, but its easy. A homologous structure worksheet from Amber that would work well with the chicken wing dissection.

A lab on infering evolutionary relationships from Amber and student work

A lesson on using fossils to date rocks [|American Field guide-relative dating]

A great activity to put together Gondwanaland (the southern part of Pangaea) [|Wegener's Puzzling Evidence]

An activity to recreate the fossil record of an imaginary genus [|Barbellus]

A frog lab from Jorge J at JWMS- you can create a way to generate "mutations" say with a dice roll and see how they affect the frog's jumping ability.

An activity that looks at fossil record of change over time

Two websites with great evolution resources and activities-[|ENSI][|UCMP] and a worksheet using information from the UCMP website

Jerry R. Uses owl Pellet dissections as a way to get kids to understand how a paleontologist might try to reconstruct a skeleton with incomplete information.

A version of the ever popular bird beak lab

And another [|bird beak lab] Another way to bird beaks is outside by scattering beans on grass- after the students have come to conclusions about which beak is best adapted, they should count the colors of beans that they have and realize that the prey adapts as well- pinto beans are much more camoflaged than white beans.

Some great evolution activities from Sarah R. A way to get students to notice variation using shells (find on a beach or purchase at Michael's). Each student gets a shell and then pairs up with another student and has to list 10 differences between their shells. To make it harder, they can pair up by finding the student with the most similar shell to theirs.

Lots of evolution short videos with attached activities from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. [|Howard Hughes Medical Instititute Biointeractive]

Natural Selection Virtual Lab __ https://docs.google.com/View?docid=dgpsc7g4_233cn9mcnkn __

The walking sticks activity lets you run a simulation and collect data of a population over time that can be graphed. You need to log in to access-this is very simple and fast
 * Foss web games at:** [|FOSS web evolution games]

Wild Mustard-broccoli lab- Broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, kale, etc are cultivars of wild mustard-an invasive found at higher elevations and unfortunately becoming more and more common (Whitewater in spring is a good source). Students can compare features to create hypothesis about lineage. They will be surprised that all these plants are considered to be the same species and that these differences have been produced by artificial selection in only the past few thousand years.

PBS documentary [|Sex and the Single Guppy]

Resource for Earth History and understanding relative dating [|USGS schoolyard geology]

Using timeline dots to put students into geological time

Jorge- monstrous mutations Gregg- crazy survivor Gregg- walking earth’s history Sarah- genetic drift scenarios posters
 * Coming Soon!**