Text Tuesday: Natural Selection & Homologous Structures

Hello everyone!

Today we looked a mini-lesson about natural selection to prepare us for our in-depth study next week, and then switched gears to complete a Text Tuesday on homologous structures.

We began class by playing a fun game/demo that modeled natural selection. Each student was given a card with a wing size (small/short, medium, large and extra large).  Every student stood up behind their seat, representing a living member of a species. Different environmental changes occurred (severe weather change, volcano erupts, and hunters hunted birds for feather pillows) and one by one, depending on the wing size variations, all the birds perished until there was only 1 wing-type remaining. Students were able to identify the medium wing birds as the population that would mate and produce a new generation of medium size birds (this game can be found in the prezi). We also visited the classic example of the peppered moth, pre- and post-Industrial Revolution (great for incorporating cross discipline material!).

We took several notes on page 47 of our notebook as we moved through our class prezi. Our notes are below:

Afterwards we switched gears and staying true to Text Tuesday we read a Common Core text on homologous structures! Students completed the reading “collaborative” style where each partner in the pair/group reads round-robin style (ie Partner A reads a paragraph, then Partner B reads a paragraph, then Partner A reads again, and so on and so forth). Once they completed the reading, students answered 3 comprehension-based questions as a group (each person taking turns writing the answer on the group paper) and submitted it to the class block bin.

Need some materials? Find them below!

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Here’s the link to our class prezi: http://prezi.com/3rocmka8hhfi/what-is-evolution/

Here is our Text Tuesday reading: Homologous Structures CC Reading

See you Wednesday!

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Meredith Science with Mrs. Barton