Lesson Plan

This lesson introduces students to natural selection and adaptation through direct instruction, hands-on activities, and class discussion. In this lesson, the first part is a brief video which explains to students how environment as well as inherited characteristics affect whether or not an individual can survive and produce offspring. Then students will participate in the "Battle of the Beaks" project (hands-on) whereby students utilize different tools for their bird beaks to see which tool most successfully gathers specific foods. Once data has been collected and analyzed, students will create and construct a new beak model utilizing common items found in the classroom. While developing their beak model, students are applying problem solving and engineering design to enhance its effectiveness. As students complete the project, they work collaboratively as a team to provide one another information about what they have observed during the experiment, and provide scientific evidence to support their statements. At the conclusion of the project, there will be a directed class discussion connecting the project to the scientific theories of survival, adaptation, and evolution; therefore providing students with an understanding of population changes over time due to natural selection. Assessment throughout the lesson includes teachers observing student progress, asking questions to students regarding their experience and collaboration among teams, evaluating redesigned beak models created by the students based on data collected from the activity, and determining if students are able to make decisions using scientific evidence when choosing designs for their redesigned beak. At the end of the lesson, students will also fill out an exit ticket that will allow them to evaluate how environmental conditions affect survival, as well as to explain how natural selection results in adaptations within populations over time.