Evolution Unit

Evolution Unit

Genetics in the Environment (aka Natural Selection)  (10 days)
Each numbered item is intended to be a one day (50 minute) lesson unless otherwise noted. The boldfaced items have files you can download on the website. The others utilize links to other websites.
1. Candy Camouflage Activity. An excellent yet simple game showing how a subset of a population might become dominant due to environmental changes.
2. Giraffe Necks and Legs Activity. Another game that shows how environmental changes might favor certain traits. It’s not a “fair” game, which is actually a valuable lesson.
3. Beans, Bowls, and Extinctions. The last simple activity showing favoring of traits. This can take much less than a class period if you like.
4. It’s NOT Random (Chaos Dots) The students begin with three dots and use dice and one rule to create more dots until a pattern emerges. Yes, one rule, such as “the fit reproduce more than the less fit” can create lovely patterns in nature.
5. Clipbird Island An excellent lesson that shows the way isolation can cause speciation.
6. Key day: Introduce terms “evolution” and “natural selection. Be sure to read the “Key Day” file prior to this critical lecture! Do ”What evolution IS and IS NOT” (also share cartoons)
7. Becoming Whales (2 days). An excellent lesson that shows how natural selection is a scientific process. The students unearth fossils in the order they were discovered and maker predictions.  See the Becoming Whales Intro before clicking the link http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/whale.ev.html
8. Blocks and Screws http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/bl&scr.html . Students learn to contrive ways to get a wood screw into a piece of wood without using s screwdriver., then extend this to hoe natural selection uses existing parts to contrive new uses for new environments. See also contrivances background
9. History of Natural Selection Project. A research project that covers various historical figures in evolution.
10.Powerpoint or other review

GEMS “Life Through Time” (15 days)
http://lhsgems.org/gemslifethroughtime.html

Overview
This unit offers excellent visual and kinesthetic impact in processing the concepts of natural selection. Essentially you take a journey from the early days of Earth through several evolutionary stages until you arrive at present times. They include examinations of living creatures, aquaria and terraria, fossils, atmosphere, plate tectonics, and more. Each stage has stations that the students visit. The stations stay consistent from stage to stage, but the organisms and environment changes. You will need the GEMS Guide (link above). It requires a great deal of preparation the first time you teach it, but is worth the effort

Application of Processes
The unit as described does not focus on processes but on events. In other words, they do not learn about natural selection but they experience the changes over time. You can easily alter the prompts for various written reports on the stations to require the use of natural selection processes and words like contrivance, homologous, and vestigial to change this unit into a nice wrap up of natural selection.

Teaching this unit after the natural selection introduction really takes the concepts into the real world, making retention of knowledge much greater.

Procedures
You will need to purchase the book to understand the procedures. Each of the five time periods has several stations, such as an aquarium, terrarium, climate station, plate tectonics station, fossil station, and more. Each time period might look like this:

1. Day 1 – start the stations
2. Day 2 – complete the stations
3. Day 3 – debrief the stations

In addition there are introductory and concluding activities you may want to use, and some of the stations can be done in two days rather than three.

Background and Extra Files
These files may offer the teacher a viewpoint or provide additional student activities
• BebbledwarkWorld (Excellent online activity that is interesting and complex)
• http://www.fresno.k12.ca.us/schools/S090/_atkinsgatebio/BebbleHTML/bebbledwarkworld.htm
• Chaos - Living on the Edge (Refutes the watchmaker hypothesis) http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/chaos.html
• Natural Selection - A Cumulative Process (A simple card activity that shows the cumulative effects of evolution) http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/lessons/ns.cum.l.html
• Videos through PBS. These are about 7 minutes long and free online http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/educators/index.html
• Online Overview – An outstanding collection of informative pages and lessons created by UC Berkeley. http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evohome.html

Appreciation
These are not my lessons. With a few minor exceptions, these are lessons I gathered from other teachers. I would like to especially thank ENSI (Evolution and the Nature of Science Institutes) and their wonderful webmaster, Larry Flammer (http://www.indiana.edu/~ensiweb/home.html ). I would also like to thank the Lawrence Hall of Science “Great Explorations in Math and Science (GEMS) who created the “Life Through Time” unit (http://lhsgems.org/GEMS.html ). Many other sites were trolled and are cited here. Thank you to all teachers who are generous enough to share their skills and lessons!