SC.912.L.15.1

In this lesson students will see the different types of evidence scientists use to understand evolutionary relationships among organisms. They will first practice by using shared physical characteristics to predict relationships among members of the cat family and then use this approach to predict primate relationships. They will compare their predictions to evidence provided by analyzing amino acid sequences and build a phylogenetic tree based on these sequences. Finally, they will look at the tree in the context of time in order to see divergence times.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an intended to support reading in the content area. The article presents new research that suggests dinosaurs were not able to vocalize or "sing" in a way similar to modern birds. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an that addresses the genetic analysis of a 4,800-year-old dog found in a tomb in Ireland and how this information gives rise to a new hypothesis that dogs may have been domesticated at least twice, once in East Asia and also in Europe. This lesson is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text that presents the major discovery of a nearly-intact cranial fossil of an ancient mammal from the Southern Hemisphere. The article discusses the significance of the discovery of this previously unknown mammal, a mammal scientists have named Vintana sertichi. This lesson plan is designed to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text by scientist Paul Marek, who re-charted the millipede Motyxia Bistipida's evolutionary tree based on new information about its bioluminescence. This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The lesson plan includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Numerous options to extend the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson will be used to teach about fossil evidence found in layers on the Earth and how it shows how life has evolved.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson introduces the concept of comparative embryology. Students will work in groups to observe similarities and differences in embryos from different organisms, and will make inferences to an evolutionary relationship between them.

Type: Lesson Plan

Richard Dawkins, an English ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and writer of the 21^st century, has said, "You can't even begin to understand biology, you can't understand life, unless you understand what it's all there for, how it arose - and that means evolution." his quote emphasizes the importance of the comprehension of the theory of evolution in the discipline of biology. Living beings may seem diverse, but under the eyes of evolution, every living being comes from a common ancestor. Therefore, all species in the planet Earth are related. Thanks to the discovery of DNA and the technological advances being made in molecular genetics, we know that all organisms share the same four nitrogen bases which codifies within the same 20 amino acids: the difference is just the sequence. The evolutionary theory explains relationships between organisms by common ancestry. With all this knowledge, it's imperative to understand the foundation and what supports this theory.

This lesson contains three learning activities to achieve the learning objective. The first activity is a bell work that consist of three questions to assess prior knowledge of the students in diversity and evolution. The second activity is a collaborative research for each category that supports evolution. The last activity is the completion of notes taken by each student to ensure understanding and comprehension for every piece of evidence.

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson introduces the concept of speciation through geographic isolation. It uses pictures, small groups, and a short reading article to reinforce the concepts with multiple learning styles. 

Type: Lesson Plan

This lesson will help students develop a cladogram to demonstrate the evolutionary relationships of diverse organisms.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will compare the sequence of amino acids in a gene shared between humans and six other organisms and infer evolutionary relationships among the species.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this Blended Learning lesson, students will learn how to make phylogenetic trees based on both physical characteristics and on DNA sequence. The lesson model includes a video of a scientist who co-facilitates the lesson with the teacher, a teacher's guide, the handouts students will need, and a transcript. The Blended Learning model combines online learning with classroom instruction, where world-class experts, such as scientists and mathematicians from around the world use video to help teachers deliver lessons, while ensuring the students and teacher actively engage in the lesson through activities and discussion.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will experience the historical discovery of fossils that increasingly link whales to earlier land-dwelling mammals. This experience reveals how scientists can make predictions about past events, based on the theory and evidence that whales evolved. This lesson also provides confirmation, with multiple independent lines of evidence, that there is a series of intermediate forms, showing gradual accumulation of changes, linking certain terrestrial mammal groups with modern whales.

Type: Lesson Plan

A lesson about the important topic of antibiotic-resistant bacteria with student activities and A/V resources.

Type: Lesson Plan

A PBS Nova Podcast/Video with accompanying activities that introduce and explore paleontology and the geologic timescale through analysis of fossil bones.

Type: Lesson Plan

Through a series of fictionalized diary entries, this case recounts the 1939 discovery by Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer (and identification by J.L.B. Smith) of a living coelacanth, a fish believed to be extinct for over 70 million years. Developed for use in a freshman biology course as an introduction to the nature and methods of scientific inquiry, the case could also be modified for use in a number of upper-level biology courses such as ichthyology, evolutionary biology, and conservation ecology.

Type: Lesson Plan

This activity will introduce Darwin and his travels. A world map is used along with excerpts from his book to plot his voyage and discoveries.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will analyze an informational text intended to support reading in the content area. The article in this lesson describes how a species of fish has adapted to lethal levels of toxic pollutants due to their high level of genetic variation, which allows them to evolve quickly. Scientists hope to use studies of these fish to understand human reactions to environmental chemicals. This lesson includes a note-taking guide, text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric.

Type: Lesson Plan

Learn how to identify explicit evidence and understand implicit meaning in a text.

You should be able to explain how different types of scientific evidence support the theory of evolution, including direct observation, fossils, DNA, biogeography, and comparative anatomy and embryology.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Frank Johnson discusses tweeting.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Dr. Gregory Erickson explains the fossil record and how it supports the scientific theory of evolution.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Let this teacher tell you a tail tale about a comparative embryology idea.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Teaching Idea

Scientists know all dogs descended from the gray wolf, but they don't know exactly how that happened. In this activity, students will engage in a card game simulation to learn how selective pressures can affect an organism's evolution.

Type: Problem-Solving Task

Students will work in groups to select 5-10 organisms, create a dichotomous key that could identify them, and a cladogram to show their evolutionary relationships.

Type: Project

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The article describes the evolution of a type of fish who can survive in a human-altered, toxic environment. The text discusses possible reasons for this successful evolution and what the implications are for other species, including humans.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. Scientists have presented new findings on the fossilized voice box called a syrinx -- and its apparent absence in non-avian dinosaur fossils of the same age. This may indicate that other non-avian dinosaurs were not able to make noises similar to the bird calls we hear today.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. This article describes a new research discovery of the fossil remains of a groundhog-like mammal found in Madagascar. The article details the methodology scientists employed to unearth the fossil skull and explains the insights it offers into early mammalian evolution in the Southern Hemisphere.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is designed to support reading in the content area. The author tells of his success in locating and reclassifying a species of millipedes known as Motyxia bistipita. Until his rediscovery these millipedes were not known to show bioluminescence. Once he discovered this trait he was then also able to trace their evolutionary lineage and determine the reasons for the development of this ability in bipista's relatives. This article also discusses bioluminescence in other species and its important medical applications.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This is a fine synopsis of a previously reported (and highly technical) study that shows the thought process behind challenging an existing theory. The subject is human evolution and the biology of childbirth. It encompasses basic anthropology concepts such as walking upright, as well as the biology of energy needs in pregnancy. Long-held views (that narrow birth canals are required for bipedalism) are debunked by careful analysis of how women with varying hip widths actually walk—and the authors found no difference.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. New evidence shows that polar bears split off from their closest ancestors, brown bears, less than 500,000 years ago. This is a very short time for a large mammal to evolve. In that time, polar bears have evolved many adaptations to their specialized lifestyle, including the ability to process the large amount of fat in their seal-based diet. This is shown by their unique DNA sequence of genes related to fat processing and heart development.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. A new study explains that about half of our genes are copies, made by error during DNA replication, that have escaped elimination by natural selection through the addition of methyl groups. Usually these copies would be susceptible to developing mutations, but it is newly understood that they are evolving new functions instead.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article discusses the possibility that the modern Arctic fox and other "hypercarnivorous" polar predators may have their origins in the Tibetan Plateau. The study uses fossil evidence, comparative anatomy, and biogeography to trace the evolutionary origins of the Arctic fox to the Himalayas.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The article describes the discovery of an ancient fish that provides scientists with a "missing link" in the fossil record, helping them understand when and how organisms transitioned from boneless, jawless organisms into the fish that dominate the oceans today. The text details the adaptations these ancient fish had and draws connections to adaptations found in later species.

Type: Text Resource

Scientists discover a fossil which dates back 1.42 million years and shows the development of a bone not found in human fossils prior to this date.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. This article shows how, through experimentation, bacteria evolve over a short period of time. The E.coli bacteria show the ability to eat a new food, citrate, after 13,000 generations of gene mutation.

Type: Text Resource

This series of lessons introduces students to evolutionary reasoning and to the explanatory power of the Darwinian model of natural selection. Students read three evolutionary scientists' (Paley, Lamarck and Darwin) original work and compare their thinking, proposed mechanism of evolution, use of evidence, and explanatory power of their theory. They apply the three scientists thinking to another scenario to refine their understanding of the explanations.

Type: Unit/Lesson Sequence

In this video, research is presented describing scientific studies of marine fossils found in Arctic regions.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This simulation shows the spread of a favorable mutation through a population of pocket mice. Even a small selective advantage can lead to a rapid evolution of the population.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This lesson on evolution consists of two activities.
In the first, students will take on the role of a paleontologist who is investigating a particular period of time in Earth's history using the Web Geological Time Machine at the University of California, Berkeley Museum of Paleontology Web site to make a detailed journal entry with illustrations.
In the second activity, Evolution WebQuest, students investigate a variety of types of evidence for evolution from different areas of science. Students divide into groups of six and each member of the group becomes a specialist in anatomy and physiology, paleontology or molecular biology. The anatomists study the structure, physiologists study function, molecular biologists study genetics, and the paleontologists study fossils to find examples of evidence for evolution.

Type: WebQuest