Online Lessons and Activities
So you want your students to walk out of your classroom with a solid,
foundational understanding of evolution—one that they can build on in high
school. Well, to help you with that cause, we have selected this handful of
online lessons and activities. They use digital media in engaging ways to
address a variety of topics related to evolution. There are simulations of
natural selection and speciation, full lessons about the history of science and
the modern-day need to understand evolution, and a cladistics tutorial that
deals with the relationships among living things. Students can complete the
simulations in a single class period, while the lessons and tutorial are
designed for multiple class periods. Take your pick!
This excellent simulation does more than tell students what speciation is—it
gives the concept wings, beaks, colored plumage, ecological context, and
appropriate time scales. Yes, we're talking birds here, and specifically the
adaptive radiation of new bird species from members of an original species
scattered to different islands during a hurricane. The simulation does a
marvelous job illustrating scenarios—including changing levels of competition,
predation, and food availability—under which new species can evolve. An extra
plus is that students can synthesize information presented on maps and graphs
and in images and text as they trace the new species' development over millions
of years. Answering the Questions for Discussion that follow the introductory
reading could help students with this synthesis. Although the simulated events
and species are not real, a special feature called the Species Gallery
highlights five actual examples of adaptive radiation. MSP full record
Not sure if your students are grasping what they read about natural selection in
a textbook? Fuzzy blue (pretend) organisms, bar and line graphs of changing
phenotypes, and the ability to simulate one, five, or fifty reproductive cycles
at a time may get their synapses firing. This interactive simulation of natural
selection offers lots of data displays. Depending on your students' familiarity
with such displays and with vocabulary like mutation and phenotype, you may
want to project the simulation and discuss the help documentation that's
available for each feature before students explore on their own or in groups.
Remember that the mutation rate and selection strength are adjustable, so
encourage students to change those settings and study the outcomes. And before
they do any of this, they should read the introductory material, which includes
a summary of natural selection. MSP full record
Sure, primary sources are important, but they aren't always an easy fit for the
middle school science classroom. Give it a try with this rich lesson from PBS!
It offers teaching and learning supports galore, and your students will work
with Darwin's journal entries from the Beagle journey—how's that for the
history of science? The lesson is split into two activities, each with teacher
and student pages. An assessment rubric that covers both activities is also
provided. In the first activity, students plot the location of journal entries
on a world map and then prepare a concept map of what they detect in the
entries that led to Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection.
Students place Darwin's work in historical context in terms of science and
world events in the second activity. Because Darwin's journal entries may be
challenging for middle school students to read, and the number of timeline
entries that students are asked to make in the second activity might be a bit
daunting, think about using the jigsaw strategy for one or both of these
activities. MSP full record
After completing the two activities in this lesson, students should be able to
offer more than a shrug of their shoulders if you ask them the question posed
in the lesson's title. The lesson spans multiple class periods and includes the
same kinds of teacher and student supports as the lesson above (both are from
the same PBS site). The first activity makes it clear that evolution is
occurring right now and that natural selection in microbes can happen in short
time frames with health consequences for humans. Students view a video clip
about the evolution of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis and create a product to
educate the public about antibiotic resistance. In the second activity,
students investigate how evolution impacts a specific topic such as
biotechnology or the environment and then share their discoveries with a home
group in classic jigsaw-style. Since the report that students work with in this
activity is far from light reading, it presents a good opportunity for them to
practice skimming and scanning. They'll also want to consult additional
reference sources. MSP full record
This five-part tutorial does an excellent job of introducing middle and high
school students to cladistics. The cladogram is another tool you can use to
help students grasp the big picture of evolution—the concepts of common
ancestry and descent with modification are at its core. Check out the teacher's
guide for a lesson plan that uses the tutorial, pre- and post-tests, and other
tips. The tutorial addresses how cladograms are constructed, what they have to
do with evolution, and the kinds of questions that they can answer about
organisms. Each part of the tutorial includes a summary segment and questions
to check students' understanding. The tutorial is interactive, so students
receive feedback on the answers they select. MSP full record
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Copyright
June 2005 — The Ohio State University. This material is based upon work
supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0424671. Any
opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this
material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of
the National Science Foundation.
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This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
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