Lesson Plan
Introduction: The topic of the lesson in Biology is “What Evidence Shows that Different Species Are Related?”. It is designed to support teachers and students through an educational process by providing clear instructions, objectives, material, and activities that can help 14-15-year-old students learn better the world of Biology and the variety of species that exist around.
Key Concepts: Evolution, a variety of species, differences and similarities, the relationship between species, fossils.
Objectives: Students should demonstrate their communicative skills and abilities to comprehend how different species can be related; students learn more about the evidence for evolution and discuss the material that has to observe; students try to share their opinions and compare them before and after new material is offered; students compare their predictions and analyze the results got.
Material: a video presentation is taken from youtube.com (11min, 21 sec); a table with a list of evidence for the connection between species; several books that are required for reading, the cards with the evidence for evolution list.
Activities, Instructions, and Expectations: The following table introduces the activities that can be offered to students.
Assignment Details: At the end of the class, a teacher gives clear instructions for students to be followed. Students get their homework and the assignment to read several chapters from different books. Besides, it is offered to prepare a project on the basis of the evolution topic and the differences between species and the possibility to relate them. Students are divided into groups of two and develop projects on different animals that can be related.
Outcomes: Students have to be motivated to study deeper the process of evolution. There are many animals that can be compared and related. The question of evolution is open today, and students have to contribute to this question as well. A teacher is not only a guide. He/she is a mentor and a facilitator in a learning process.
Common Core Standards: These standards are created to provide students with help on how to learn the required skills and use them properly. The current lesson plan is developed for 9th-grade students. It is possible to apply the standards that are developed by the California Department of Education in 2013. There are several standards that can be used in the plan under consideration.
- Students have to develop an explanation on the basis of evidence;
- Students should create models to illustrate the organization of interacting systems;
- Students should apply statistics and probability to support their explanations;
- Students need to create simulations with the help of which they can test their solutions and understand the impact of biodiversity.
This information is analyzed and taken from “HS-LS4 Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity” (California Department of Education, par.4).
Work Sheet
This example of a work sheet can be offered to students at the end of the lesson to check their level of knowledge about the topic discussed during the lesson. The answers should not be too long but informative (to demonstrate students’ understanding of a topic).
- What is evolution?
- What is the main evidence for evolution?
- What do you know about paleontologists?
- Why are fossil records necessary?
- How is it possible to prove the connection between a dinosaur and a cow, for example?
- What is natural selection? Provide an example of natural selection.
- How is it possible to change the word combination “the change over time”?
- What do you know about Darwin?
- What way do scientists prefer to use to investigate the diversity among species?
- Do species change at all?
Describe your personal opinion on the lesson and the level of knowledge you expected to get and have gotten at the end.
It is necessary to inform students that some questions can be neither right nor wrong only. These questions should help students develop their critical thinking and analytical skills. Their answers should provide a teacher with a clear picture of what students know, want to know, and do not know at all. As soon as each student offers the answers, the following lesson can be developed.
Works Cited
California Department of Education. NGSS for California Public Schools, K-12. 2013. Web.
DeBenedictis, Albert. Evolution or Creation?: A Comparison of the Arguments. Bloomington, IL: Xlibris Corporation, 2014. Print.
Franklin, Janet. Mapping Species Distributions: Spatial Inference and Prediction. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Print.
Smith, Andrew. Systematics and the Fossil Record: Documenting Evolutionary Patterns. Cambridge, MA: John Wiley & Sons, 2009. Print.
Treuting, Piper and Suzanne Dintzis. Comparative Anatomy and Histology: A Mouse and Human Atlas. San Diego, CA: Academic Press, 2012. Print.
What Is the Evidence for Evolution? 2014. Web.