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This performance task will demonstrate students' understanding of natural selection at the end of a unit on the theory of evolution.

Type: Assessment

The software application, which allows the students to simulate natural selection in a population of dots, goes along with a tutorial which is also at this site.

Type: Educational Game

In this lesson, students will analyze an intended to support reading in the content area. The article addresses how the United States is addressing the discovery of E.coli that is resistant to colistin, an antibiotic used only as a last resort. The text describes steps to take now that this superbug has reached our country. Scientists from the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine explain why it is so easy for bacteria to share their "knowledge" about antibiotic resistance and discuss how concerned the U.S. citizens should be, as well as what we can do to slow the spread of superbugs.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a lesson plan designed to explain three evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow. The lesson plan consists of a brief review about mutations and DNA, a PowerPoint discussion about the three evolutionary processes, and a hands-on activity. The activity is designed to help the students understand how populations change over time due to different traits in individuals in a population, as well as how to identify the different evolutionary processes in a population.

Type: Lesson Plan

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. In this lesson, students will analyze a text that addresses the issue of evolution by natural selection and mutation, using Florida "beach mice" as a case study. The lesson plan includes text-dependent questions, a writing prompt, answer keys, and a writing rubric. Ideas for extending the lesson are also included.

Type: Lesson Plan

No need to search multiple lesson plans! The 5E (Engage, Explore, Explain, Elaborate, Evaluate) is a way to cover natural selection in a format that addresses misconceptions and allow learners to gather information through critical thinking over a series of activities.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students simulate the process of natural selection and its effects on prey phenotype frequencies over multiple generations. Students are provided with four background patterns and many prey pieces in four corresponding patterns. In this way, each prey type is well-camouflaged for one corresponding background, but is less suited to the others in varying degrees. Following several rounds of natural selection simulation, students compare prey phenotype frequencies to those frequencies found using random selection.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will use the real-world example of Hurricane Opal wiping out the beach mouse population from Shell Island in 1995. Students will identify the environmental pressures that led to the differentiation of the Choctawhatchee beach mouse from the mainland population (St. Andrew beach mouse) as natural selection. They will examine the beach mouse population on this island immediately following the hurricane as an example of genetic drift, and the re-population of the island as gene flow. Students will then track changes in the population from the initial re-population following the hurricane to the current population and relate this to natural selection.

Type: Lesson Plan

This is a low cost, simple to setup lab that simulates factors involved in natural selection. Students become "predators" that, along with the background environment, put selective pressure on a population of prey (discs). Students will make predictions, manipulate materials, collect data, analyze that data, and write a conclusion. This lab is easily modified to accommodate lower grade levels or expanded for higher level courses.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will learn how sexual selection leads to the evolution of species by exploring how courtship rituals lead to the selection of traits in a population.

Type: Lesson Plan

Students will study the concept of speciation and predict an island habitat"s biodiversity based on the island's size and distance from the mainland.

Type: Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students will take a short inventory on Natural Selection where they will be asked to read short passages and answer questions based on the Theory of Natural Selection. By comparing answers the students gave, the teacher will be able to identify common misconceptions they have on the Theory of Evolution.

Type: Lesson Plan

Principles of natural selection are demonstrated by a simulation involving different color pompoms on different color and texture habitats and student feeders equipped with different types of feeding implement. Students learn how different adaptations contribute to differences in survival and reproductive success, which results in changing frequencies of genotypes in the populations.

Type: Lesson Plan

Explore three conditions required for natural selection and see how these conditions lead to allele frequency shifts in a population. 

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Describe the conditions required for natural selection and tell how it can result in changes in species over time. In this interactive tutorial, follow Charles Darwin through a life of exploration, observation, and experimentation to see how he developed his ideas.

Type: Original Student Tutorial

Nick Moore discusses his research behind optimizing wing design using inspiration from animals and how they swim and fly.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

This video is a natural selection for learning about evolution.

Download the CPALMS Perspectives video student note taking guide.

Type: Perspectives Video: Expert

Pick up a new idea about how to teach concepts related to natural selection in this video!

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

This resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text describes how colistin-resistant bacteria have reached the United States, which is cause for great concern. There are currently some strains of bacteria that are resistant to all types of antibiotics. Scientists will have to develop new antibiotics if we are to continue our mostly successful fight against bacterial disease.

Type: Text Resource

This informational text resource is intended to support reading in the content area. The text describes how natural selection occurs when mutations occur in an individual's DNA sequence. Two different populations can have two different genetic mutations yet end up with a similar phenotype.

Type: Text Resource

This Khan Academy tutorial explains how the owl butterfly might have evolved the spots on its wings through natural selection.

Type: Tutorial

This short video describes the process of antibiotic resistance. Right now, you are inhabited by trillions of micro organisms. Many of these bacteria are harmless (or even helpful!), but there are a few strains of ‘super bacteria' that are pretty nasty -- and they're growing resistant to our antibiotics. Why is this happening? Kevin Wu details the evolution of this problem that presents a big challenge for the future of medicine.

Type: Tutorial

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

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

The video describes how variation can be introduced into a species.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

This is a lesson about phenotypical variation within populations and how these differences are essential for biological evolution. Students will use a model organism (in this case, kidney beans) to explore variation patterns and subsequently connect these differences to artificial & natural selection. The NGSS’ CrossCutting Concepts and Science & Engineering Practices are embedded throughout the lesson.

The main learning objectives are:

• Using a model (kidney beans) to explore the natural variations within a population.
• Measuring differences between individuals in a population (population of beans).
• Describing how genetic/phenotypic variation is a key part of biological evolution because it is a prerequisite for natural selection.
• Demonstrating in which ways genetic variation is advantageous to a population because it enables some individuals to adapt to the environment while maintaining the survival of the population.

The NGSS Performance Expectations covered are HS-LS4-2. & HS-LS4-4.

Type: Video/Audio/Animation

Students will explore natural selection by controlling the environment and causing mutations in bunnies. This will demonstrate how natural selection works in nature. They will have the opportunity to throw in different variables to see what will make their species of rabbit survive.

Type: Virtual Manipulative

This resource for biology teachers includes a lesson plan section which contains classroom activities, labs and worksheets. The activity sheets are categorized by Science and Literacy, Anatomy, Scientific Method, Cells, Phyla, Evolution and Taxonomy, Genetics, Ecology, and Plants.

Type: Worksheet