| Lesson Title (Description) | Grade Level | Lesson Type |
Can You Match Them?
Students find matching sounds by shaking containers and listening to sounds generated. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
Can You Tell by Touch?
Students feel inside a bag and use only their sense of touch to describe and identify one of the objects inside the bag. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
In the Dark
Students, in pairs, go on a trust walk to use senses other than vision. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
Oh Say, What Can You See?
Students walk outdoors to use their sense of sight and record and compare their observations. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
Sniff and Guess
Students use their sense of smell to identify the contents of Mystery Odor Cans. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
Sounds Around
Students use their sense of hearing outdoors to discover things in their world. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
Taster's Choice
Students taste foods and graph their likes and dislikes. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
Textures Are Everywhere
Students use their sense of touch outdoors and record and compare their observations. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
What Food Is It?
Students close their eyes and taste foods without using their sense of sight. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
What in the World Do You Smell?
Students walk outside to use their sense of smell to discover odors in their world. |
K-2 |
Classroom activity |
Coping with Environmental Differences
Students will observe and conduct an experiment to see whether differences in salinity (the environment) have an affect on the hatching rate and survival of brine shrimp. |
3-5 |
Classroom activity |
Reconstruction
Students reconstruct sentences by reassembling the words that have been cut apart. |
3-5 |
Classroom activity |
Tennis Shoe Detectives
Students make observations, examine data, and form hypotheses about a set of footprints and what they can tell us. |
3-5 |
Classroom activity |
Xenosmilus
Students play the roles of paleontologists on a dig. They “unearth” a few fossils at a time and attempt to reconstruct the animal the fossils represent. |
3-5 |
Classroom activity |
Adventures at Dry Creek
In this interactive web-based module students conduct a simulated field study at a fossil dig in Montana. |
6-8 |
Web activity |
Climate Analysis Using Planktonic Foraminifera
Students manipulate, plot, and interpret data on the occurence of a particular species of foraminifera in the fossil record in order to infer changes in climate during the last 160,000 years. |
6-8 |
Classroom activity |
Dino-Data
Students are presented with a set of data about dinosaurs and are asked to make hypotheses about what the data can tell us. |
6-8 |
Classroom activity |
Dogs and Turnips
In this lesson students attempt to assemble a meaningful sentence by successively turning over cards with words on them. The point is made that we change our ideas of what a story may be as we gather more information. |
6-8 |
Classroom activity |
Great Fossil Find
Students are taken on an imaginary fossil hunt and hypothesize as to the identity of the creature they discover. Students revise their hypotheses as new evidence is "found." |
6-8 |
Classroom activity |
Inferring Ancient Environments from Fossil Foraminifera
Students analyze actual data from samples of microfossils collected from a particular locality. They use this data to infer water depths in the Miocene in order to locate potential petroleum reserves. |
6-8 |
Classroom activity |
Interpreting the Tracks
Students discover the relationships among foot length, leg length, stride length and speed in bipedal animals that provide clues about dinosaur speed. |
6-8 |
Classroom activity |
Nature of science
Understanding how science works allows one to easily distinguish science from non-science. Thus, to understand biological evolution, or any other science, it is essential to begin with the nature of science. |
6-8 |
Tutorial |
Xenosmilus
Students play the roles of paleontologists on a dig. They “unearth” a few fossils at a time and attempt to reconstruct the animal the fossils represent. |
6-8 |
Classroom activity |
A Survey About Science
Students conduct a survey about the nature of science, laws, theories, hypotheses, scientists, and evolution. |
9-12 |
Classroom activity |
Aloha - spider style!
This research profile follows Dr. Rosemary Gillespie to Hawaii as she evaluates hypotheses about the evolution of the colorful happy-face spider. |
9-12 |
Article |
Ancient Farmers of the Amazon
In this activity, students find out about research being conducted on Amazon leafcutter ants. They also watch video segments to make their own virtual field observations and write their own research proposals. |
9-12 |
Classroom activity |
Ancient fossils and modern climate change: The work of Jennifer McElwain
Wondering how global warming will affect our planet? Scientist Jennifer McElwain studies the fossil record in order to learn more about how global warming has affected life on Earth in the past and how it might affect life on Earth in the future. |
9-12 |
Article |
Battling bacterial evolution: The work of Carl Bergstrom
This research profile examines how the scientist Carl Bergstrom uses computer modeling to understand and control the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria in hospitals. |
9-12 |
Article |
Biological warfare and the coevolutionary arms race
The rough-skinned newt looks harmless enought but is, in fact, packed full of one of the most potent neurotoxins known to man. Find out how an evolutionary arms race has pushed these mild-mannered critters to the extremes of toxicity and how evolutionary biologists have unraveled their fascinating story. |
9-12 |
Article |
Comparing Explanatory Models
This series of lessons introduces students to evolutionary reasoning and to the explanatory power of the Darwinian model of natural selection. |
9-12 |
Article |
Evo in the news: Cheating cheetahs prosper
Biologists have discovered that female cheetahs consistently seek out multiple mates. This news brief, from July 2007, explains how the evolutionary implications of this behavior may help conservation efforts targeting these endangered animals. |
9-12 |
Article |
Evo in the news: Musseling in on evolution
This news brief, from September 2006, reviews a recent case of evolution in action. In just 15 years, mussels have evolved in response to an invasive crab species. Find out how biologists uncovered this example of evolution on double time. |
9-12 |
Article |
Evo in the news: When it comes to evolution, headlines often get it wrong
Newly discovered fossils are prompting some scientists to consider a minor revision of the relationships shown on the human family tree. This news brief from September 2007 clarifies the occasionally misleading news coverage of the story. |
9-12 |
Article |
Fire ants invade and evolve
Understanding the evolution of fire ants may help scientists control the spread of these pests, which have already taken over much of the U.S.! |
9-12 |
Article |
From soup to cells - The origin of life
Delve into our current understandings of the origins of life and how scientists are able to investigate the details of such ancient events.
This article is located within Evolution 101. |
9-12 |
Tutorial |
Great Fossil Find
Students are taken on an imaginary fossil hunt and hypothesize as to the identity of the creature they discover. Students revise their hypotheses as new evidence is "found." |
9-12 |
Classroom activity |
History of evolutionary thought
In this section, you will see how study in four disciplinary areas — Earth's history, life's history, mechanisms of evolution, and development and genetics — has contributed to our current understanding of evolution. |
9-12 |
Article |
How to survive a mass extinction: The work of David Jablonski
Through detailed analysis of patterns in the fossil record, scientist David Jablonski reconstructs the rules that helped dictate who lived and died in past mass extinctions. This research profile describes his surprising discoveries and their disturbing implications for the biodiversity crisis today. |
9-12 |
Article |
Interview: Geerat Vermeij on the fossil record
This interview with MacArthur Fellow and paleobiologist, Geerat Vermeij, covers much ground, including adaptations in the mollusks he studies, evolutionary arms races, punctuated equilibrium, extinctions, macroevolution, and the value of diversity. |
9-12 |
Interview with Scientist |
It takes teamwork: How endosymbiosis changed life on Earth
You might be surprised to learn that descendents of an ancient bacterium are living in every cell of your body! Find out how endosymbiosis factored into the evolution of your own cells. |
9-12 |
Article |
Monarch/Viceroy Case
Students work in groups to develop a Darwinian explanation for the bright coloration of monarch and viceroy butterflies and the similarity in color patterns seen between the two species. |
9-12 |
Classroom activity |
Nature of science
Understanding how science works allows one to easily distinguish science from non-science. Thus, to understand biological evolution, or any other science, it is essential to begin with the nature of science. |
9-12 |
Tutorial |
Parsimonious explanations for punctuated patterns
Punctuated equilibrium is sometimes erroneously cited as evidence that evolutionary biology still hasn't figured out how evolution works. In fact nothing could be further from the truth. Punctuated equilibrium builds on (not tears down!) established evolutionary theory. Find out how the process works.
This article appears at SpringerLink. |
9-12 |
Article |
Proposing the Theory of Biological Evolution
Students read short excerpts of original statements on evolution from Jean Lamarck, Charles Darwin, and Alfred Russel Wallace to gain historical perspective and an understanding of the nature of science. |
9-12 |
Article |
Sequencing Events
Students attempt to sequence and create a story around a series of cartoon frames to serve as the basis for a discussion about how decisions are made and how arguments are constructed. |
9-12 |
Classroom activity |
The Checks Lab
Students construct plausible scenarios using bank checks to learn how human values and biases influence observation and interpretation. |
9-12 |
Classroom activity |
The Evolution of Flight in Birds
This interactive module examines evidence from the fossil record, behavior, biomechanics and cladistic analysis to interpret the sequence of events that led to flight in the dinosaur lineage. |
9-12 |
Web activity |
The Monterey Pine through geologic time
Understanding the evolutionary history of the Monterey Pine may help us conserve this species. |
9-12 |
Article |
Xenosmilus
Students play the roles of paleontologists on a dig. They “unearth” a few fossils at a time and attempt to reconstruct the animal the fossils represent. |
9-12 |
Classroom activity |
