Happy Monday everyone,
Today was the best Monday to start to the week this school year! I have some of the BEST (I’m talking “créme de la créme” status) students this year! They really made today (my birthday) special with creative cards, happy hugs, and generous gifts. So I send a HUGE thank you to my favorite bunch of students, ever! Also, a special thank you to Mrs. Hill-Norman, Ms. Bain, Ms. Hinton, Mr. Dixon, Mr. Gibson and Mr. Pleasant for sharing the love and good wishes! 
Alright – now back to our day’s work!
Today we began our new unit on the Theory of Evolution and Genetic Variation. I made students aware that I understand this may be a “tough” topic for some to learn, but in science it is important for students to differentiate between a LAW and a Theory at this point. So far this year, students have learned about two laws (Law of Conservation of Mass and the Law of Superposition) as well as theories (Theory of Continental Drift/Pangaea and theories for dinosaur extinction). Today, we clearly differentiated between each to help get us in the right mindset for learning.
We began with a warm up looking at similarities and differences of 4 organisms. Afterwards, we made a vocabulary foldable and later wrote down the definition for the Theory of Evolution. This set us up for completing a series of questions based on a Discovery Education video (we only covered the half of the video that related to our current content). Finally, students answered the synthesis question written on page 44 of our notebooks.
Need some resources? Find them below!
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1. Class Prezi Link: http://prezi.com/9ibwvz8qr16q/the-theory-of-evolution/
2. Discovery Education video link (you’ll need to log in): http://app.discoveryeducation.com/player/view/assetGuid/56A5F7FE-FBBE-469B-AB79-3A4E63A7AED3
(SEE – Discovery Education, (2006). Elements of Biology: Biological Evolution. [Full Video]. Available from http://www.discoveryeducation.com/ )
3. Video Questions (formatted for 2 per page front & back printing): DE – Theory of Evolution Video Worksheet
Have a GREAT evening! See you tomorrow!
