UC Berkeley
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Found 32 resources:
Planta al ataque
Grade Level(s):
- 6-8
- 9-12
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
- Comic
Time: 50 minutes
Overview
En este cómic/libro de actividades, conocerás a científicos que utilizan ideas evolutivas para resolver problemas médicos. También aprenderás sobre los árboles evolutivos mientras resuelves rompecabezas científicos y completas una actividad.
Plant on a Rampage
Grade Level(s):
- 6-8
- 9-12
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
- Comic
Time: 50 minutes
Overview
In this printable comic/activity book, you'll meet scientists who use evolutionary ideas to solve medical problems. You'll also learn about evolutionary trees while you solve science puzzles and complete a craft.
La historia de la vida: La observación de los patrones
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Tutorial
Time: 30-40 minutes
Overview
La ciencia usa muchas evidencias diferentes para reconstruir los árboles filogenéticos que nos muestran como se relacionan las especies entre sí.
Este artículo se encuentra en Evolución 101.
Making Cladograms
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
Source:
- ENSI
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: One class period
Overview
This lesson introduces students to the building of cladograms as evolutionary trees, showing how shared derived characters can be used to reveal degrees of relationship.
Two- and ten-minute trees
Grade Level(s):
- 3-5
- 6-8
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 2-10 minutes
Overview
Use these quick and simple classroom activities to better develop your students' tree-thinking skills. Each takes just a few minutes and helps reinforce key ideas about tree reading and common ancestry.
Tree thinking challenges
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- National Evolutionary Synthesis Center
Resource type:
- Video
Time: 10 minutes
Overview
In the this interactive video, college students guide viewers through problems on phylogenetics and address some of the misconceptions that many students have with the subject.
This resource is available from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center
Tree thinking basics
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- National Evolutionary Synthesis Center
Resource type:
- Video
Time: 6 minutes
Overview
Tree thinking, or phylogenetics, is an important way of understanding evolutionary relationships. Reading trees correctly can pose some challenges. This video introduces the basics of three reading and addresses common problems in tree reading.
This resource is available from the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center
Predicting evolutionary relationships
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
Source:
- NOVA
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 1 hour
Overview
Students compare the sequence of amino acids in a gene shared between humans and six other organisms and infer evolutionary relationships among the species.
Phylogenetics laboratory: Reconstructing evolutionary history
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Kefyn Catley and Laura Novick
Resource type:
- Lab activity
Time: 3 hours
Overview
By examining specimens, students fill in a data matrix of animal taxa and complete exercises to learn about synapomorphies, mapping characters on a phylogeny, and assessing parsimony.
Phylogenetics and tree thinking slide set
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
Time: 2 minutes
Overview
This set of five PowerPoint slides featuring personal response questions (i.e., multiple choice questions that can be used with "clicker" technology) can be incorporated into lectures on the mechanisms of evolution in order to actively engage students in thinking about evolution.
Phylogenetic systematics, a.k.a. evolutionary trees
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Tutorial
Time: 20 minutes
Overview
Learn about phylogenetic systematics, the study of the evolutionary relationships among organisms, and how the field is shaping biological research today.
Modeling Evolutionary Relationships with Trees
Grade Level(s):
- 6-8
- 9-12
Source:
- Shape of Life
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 100-120 minutes
Overview
In this lesson, students will examine a beautiful tree of life poster by artist Ray Troll and use it as a launchpad to explore evolutionary, or phylogenetic trees. Students will take a pre-assessment to address misconceptions about phylogenetic trees before completing a modeling activity to give them a better understanding of how trees are used to model evolutionary relationships.
The great clade race: Zombie Edition
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- Martindale, Rowan and Goldsmith, David
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 30-50 minutes
Overview
This activity uses a simple puzzle to get students to use cladistic thinking without bogging them down with terminology.
The Evolution Lab
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
Source:
- NOVA Labs
Resource type:
- Lab activity
Time: 3 hours
Overview
The Evolution Lab contains two main parts. In the first, students build phylogenetic trees themed around the evidence of evolution, including fossils, biogeography, and similarities in DNA. In the second, students explore an interactive tree of life and trace the shared ancestry of numerous species.
Making 3D phylogenetic trees with mobiles
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
Source:
- Carolina
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
Students create three-dimensional trees in the form of mobiles so that the branching nodes pivot. Students can manipulate the mobile to see the relationships more clearly and combat common misconceptions about trees.
It’s All Relative
Grade Level(s):
- 3-5
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: One class period
Overview
In this lesson, students find pictures of living things and arrange them in collages, categorizing them according to which they think are more closely related to which.
Investigating Common Descent: Formulating Explanations and Models
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- National Academy of Sciences
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: Two class periods
Overview
Students formulate explanations and models that simulate structural and biochemical data as they investigate the misconception that humans evolved from apes.
Interactive investigation: The arthropod story
Grade Level(s):
- 6-8
- 9-12
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Online activity or lab
Time: 3-4 class periods
Overview
This interactive investigation delves into the amazing world of the arthropods and examines their success and their evolutionary constraints.
How boogieing birds evolved: The work of Kim Bostwick
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Research profile
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
This research profile follows ornithologist Kim Bostwick through the jungles of Ecuador and the halls of museums as she investigates the evolution of an exotic bird's complex mating dance.
Using trees to uproot HIV: The work of Satish Pillai
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Research profile
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
This research profile follows scientist Satish Pillai as he studies the evolution of HIV within infected individuals. His research uses the tools of phylogenetics to investigate vaccine development and the possibility of curing the disease.
Using pipe cleaners to bring the Tree of Life to life
Grade Level(s):
- 6-8
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- American Biology Teacher
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 15 minutes
Overview
Students build a phylogenetic tree from pipe cleaners that allows them to rotate branches, compare topologies, map complete lineages, identify informative phylogenetic features, and examine the effects of superficial structural changes on the tree.
Evolutionary trees and patterns in the history of life
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Tutorial
Time: 30-40 minutes
Overview
Scientists use many different lines of evidence to reconstruct the evolutionary trees that show how species are related.
This article is located within Evolution 101.
Evolution and Phylogenetic Analysis
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Wilfred A. Franklin
Resource type:
- Lab activity
Time: Two 3-hour sessions
Overview
In a flexible multisession laboratory, students investigate concepts of phylogenetic analysis at both the molecular and the morphological level. Students finish by conducting their own analysis on a collections skeletons using the Mesquite software.
Understanding evolutionary trees
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Evolution: Education and Outreach
Resource type:
- Article
Time: 30 minutes
Overview
Many disciplines within biology (and many basic biology texts) have come to depend on evolutionary trees. Get the basics you need to understand and interpret these key diagrams.
This article appears at SpringerLink.
Understanding evolutionary history: An introduction to tree thinking
Grade Level(s):
- 13-16
Source:
- Laura Novick, Kefyn Catley, and Emily Schreiber
Resource type:
- Tutorial
Time: 30 min - 1 hour
Overview
This pamphlet with self-quizzes provides students with a self-paced tutorial in tree thinking and corrects many common misconceptions about phylogenetic trees.
Evo in the news: The new shrew that’s not
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Evo in the News article
Time: 20 minutes
Overview
This news brief from March of 2008 describes scientists' discovery of a new mammal species, a giant elephant shrew. Though elephant shrews resemble regular shrews, recent genetic evidence suggests that elephant shrews actually sprang from a much older (and perhaps more charismatic) branch of the tree of life - the one belonging to elephants and their relatives.
Evo in the news: Evolutionary evidence takes the stand
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Evo in the News article
Time: 20 minutes
Overview
This news brief, from January of 2007, describes the role of phylogenetic evidence in a Libyan court case. Six medical workers have been convicted of injecting children with HIV-tainted blood - but the evolutionary history of the virus paints a different picture.
Evo in the News: A new look at dinosaur fossils pushes back the evolution of feathered wings
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Evo in the News article
Time: 20 minutes
Overview
This news brief, from November 2012, describes what a new dinosaur fossil from North America has to tell us about the evolution of feathers.
Classification and Evolution
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- Gendron, Robert
Resource type:
- Lab activity
Time: Two class periods.
Overview
Students construct an evolutionary tree of imaginary animals (Caminalcules) to illustrate how modern classification schemes attempt to reflect evolutionary history.
Anolis Lizards
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
Source:
- Collins, Jennifer
Resource type:
- Lab activity
Time: Two class periods.
Overview
Students "take a trip" to the Greater Antilles to figure out how the Anolis lizards on the islands might have evolved.
What does it mean to be human?
Grade Level(s):
- 9-12
- 13-16
Source:
- Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Resource type:
- Classroom activity
Time: 8 x 50-minute class periods
Overview
In this set of advanced lessons, students use different types of data to infer/interpret phylogenies among domains, within the vertebrates, and within primates while reflecting on how they answer the question "What do you think it means to be human?" and choose a characteristic that changed substantially in the human family tree to develop a scientific argument based on evidence for when the character evolved.
What did T. Rex Taste Like?
Grade Level(s):
- 6-8
- 9-12
Source:
- UC Museum of Paleontology
Resource type:
- Online activity or lab
Time: 2-4 hours
Overview
In this web-based module students are introduced to cladistics, which organizes living things by common ancestry and evolutionary relationships.
