Evolution and Endemics on the Olympic Peninsula

On Hurricane Ridge 

Where the Wildflowers Grow ... (music video) (lyrics)

Performance Objective: When presented with examples of local endemic species and evidence for how they evolved, students will correctly identify at least one endemic species out of a list of five and come up with at least two pieces of evidence of local species changing over time.  

Content: Journal Prompt:

"Prompt: The example of the Galapagos Islands finches shows that many new and quite different species can originate out of one single species.  

But how do species originate?" 

Guest Speaker: Evolutionary Biologist

Our guest speaker is an evolutionary biologist from Olympic National Park. The guest speaker’s presentation is detailing the endemic species in Olympic National Park and discussing the evolutionary factors (island biogeography, extreme environmental conditions, short lifespans, etc.) that led to the speciation of so many endemics in this region.  

Students take notes in journals.

On Hurricane Ridge ... 

Endemic species are types of organisms that live in a specific, restricted geographic location and do not occur naturally anywhere else in the world.

The Olympic Peninsula is home to many, many endemic species.  

This is largely due to the Peninsula's island biogeography, meaning that it is presently surrounded on three sides by water and during the ice ages, it was also surrounded on the fourth side by rivers and/or ice.

View the Olympic National Park endemic animals and plants websites. 

Not included as separate species at the moment are Lake Crescent's Crescenti and Beardslee trout (compared here to normal cutthroat and rainbow trout).

Sing the "On Hurricane Ridge ..." song (see lyrics here).

Follow-Through Activities: 

The teacher facilitates a debrief discussion of the journal responses and has the guest speaker co-facilitate. 

At the end of the unit: In groups, complete letters G-L of the "How Scientific" activity.

Lesson Plan Summary:  

The Endemics and Evolution on the Olympic Peninsula lesson involves students learning about local examples of evolution from a guest presenter who is a subject matter expert in evolutionary biology. Instructional strategies include the teacher capturing attention through a song (musical intelligence), a guest speaker delivering a didactic presentation of biological evolution, students actively processing information by taking notes in their journals, and students recapping what they learned through journal prompts and a class discussion. These instructional strategies support the behaviorist learning theory in that they are focused on the simple recall of information presented by the expert and cognitive learning theory in that students previously learned about a global example of evolution earlier in this unit, thus students are adding to and applying their prior learning. There is a tiny bit of constructivism in having students create their own definition of endemic based on the song in the lesson introduction.