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Notes for teachers

This lesson is usable in 1 day depending on time. it can easily be enriched for multiple days to explore genetics and heredity. There are examples in the lesson to challenge students leading to “what if’s.”

The worksheet linked worksheet to the left is in outline form for your convenience. In the agenda, the black writing is for the teacher, blue anticipates students responses or questions.

Having ABCD groups is helpful as they can become “specialists” in certain constraints or genotypes and report their findings back to the group for discussion. Consensus and class discussions to follow. Teacher can wrap up by reviewing and having students finish their research ro exit tickets.

While monitoring, please consider listening for assumptions and make note of them to specifically ask what they found out about an assumption. Circling back to students is extremely helpful in getting students to stay on task and engage with the simulation.

List of Materials

Laptop/Chromebook
PhET Natural Selection - link to sim
Whiteboards - warm up

markers

Worksheet

please male a copy, review and manipulate as needed

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Science Standards

AZ Science Standards

8.L3U1.9

Construct an explanation of how genetic variations occur in offspring through the inheritance of traits or through mutations.

8.L4U1.11

Develop and use a model to explain how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time.

8.L4U1.12

Gather and communicate evidence on how the process of natural selection provides an explanation of how new species can evolve.

ELA Standards

AZ ELA Standards

8.W.1

Write arguments to support claims with clear reasons and relevant evidence.

8.W.6

Use technology, including the internet, to produce and publish writing and present the relationships between information and ideas efficiently as well as to interact and collaborate with others.

8.W.7

Conduct short research projects to answer a question (including a self‐generated question), drawing on several sources and generating additional related, focused questions that allow for multiple avenues of exploration

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Objectives:

Today we will:

Experiment with environments which produce a stable population of bunnies, a population that dies out, and a population that takes over the world.
Track genes through multiple generations.
Describe which traits change the survivability of an organism in different environments.

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Agenda

Warm up

What is our outdoor environment, predominantly?

Examples of our environment: Hot, sandy, dry, mountainous, rocky

If you were a scientist studying these environments and animals, what would you want to defeat the inclimate weather?
What do desert scientists look like? What do they wear? What does the camp look like?
What helps animals survive in our environment?

Student responses include ways to defeat temp (warm and cold) water scarcity, camouflage, defense, offense

Rock pocket mice live in southwestern US, mostly desert. Typically tan in color, there is a rare genetic mutation that causes them to have all black fur. Is this mutation negative, positive or no effect? Explain

Student responses might view this mutation as negative when they think about camouflage and defense.

Think about: Camo, environment, fitness for environment

Is the desert hot? So there’s a lot of sun… light means shadows… dark mice can hide in shadows. Can all mice hide in the dark? Which mouse hides best in the dark?

Whiteboards In groups, discuss your reasons and share thoughts. ie: A and C listen while B and D explain (30 sec), then A and C tell them what B and D left out (30 sec)

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Agenda

Open Play (Exploration)

5-10 minutes open play to ask me questions or figure out what buttons do. DO NOT USE WORKSHEET AT THIS TIME, DO NOT HAND OUT YET.
Assign open-ended questions or cues to generate a multitude of responses that illustrate student thinking. Examples include the following:

What do you notice? What do you wonder?
What are three things you learned?
What questions do you have?
What connections did you make with what you already know?
Compare your answers with a partner.

possible challenge prompt opportunity

Instructor Led Demonstration

10 minutes
Open PhET and go to the INTRO for NATURAL SELECTION
Make sure the scene is SUMMER, TOUGH FOOD is checked.
Given this scenario, what TRAITS will increase the rabbits FITNESS?

Fur
Teeth
Ears

Provide these traits under MUTATIONS and click add mate.
After 3 GENERATIONS, introduce WOLVES and observe the results

By introducing wolves at generation 3, we allow time for the genotype to spread through the population

Follow up: Does delaying the addition of predators give any phenotype an advantage? Challenge question opportunity

Activity

20 minutes (or more as needed)
Use the PhET simulation to do the worksheet/activities/scenarios
Please see slide 10 & 11

Share-Out (Explanation)

10 minutes
COMPARE your answers with your table mate
REFLECT on your strategies and data collection
HYPOTHESIZE if there are connections to traits and survivability.

If, then, because

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Images for warm up

Gila River

Sonoran Desert

Desert researcher

Rock pocket mice examples

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Big Question - Can Bunnies take over the world?

For the next 5 minutes, please use the PhET simulation Natural Selection.

Learn the buttons, options and run the simulation a few times. Ask yourself “What if” questions.

This game can be simplistic at first glance, but quickly shows depth.

After playing for 5 minutes (or so) try a challenge question - Change a population from 100% brown fur to 100% white fur in as few generations as possible using any feature/option. These types of questions now have students practice what they learned.

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Hands-on Activity Overview

Individually done, peer/group review.
The following slide has many sample scenarios, data collection ideas and questions highlighting limiting factors for sustainable growth.
Please edit or revise the samples on the worksheet as needed to address any misconceptions or to help students struggling with this concept.
Using the PhET simulation helps to gamify the learning leading the student to the objectives.
Help students should to draw their OWN conclusions by asking them questions about what they are observing.

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Hands-on Activity Instructions

individually done, peer/group review
Students can work in any order to arrive at the following information:

How can you get more:

White rabbits
Brown rabbits
Rabbits with big teeth
Rabbits with floppy ears

What actions did you take, avoid, or discover
Stabilization of the environment

What factors did you use to achieve balance?
Can you find other combinations of factors to achieve balance?

Adverse conditions

Can you have rabbits take over with:

Predation
Limited resources
Tough food

What traits yield which results in regard to survivability?

Ears

Good for…
Bad for…

Teeth

Good for…
Bad for…

Fur Color

Good for…
Bad for…

Data probe

What does it do?

Pedigree

Practice writing phenotypes
Practice predicting population outcomes

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Assessment

The included worksheet can be used as a map, fill in the blank, short response. It can be given all at once, or broken into smaller assignments to augment a lesson on genetics in general. This can lead to science fair projects that deal with data collection, as there are many ways to observe the data provided by this simulation.

Students can be successful even by failing a challenge if they are able to articulate what went wrong, and how different actions, procedures and or stimuli would affect the outcome.

Students can test If, Then, Because hypotheses using this simulation by changing variables and observe the outcome. This is highlighted in the worksheet under Activity/Lab outline with the question “What traits yield which results in regard to survivability?”

For example, the student might hypothesize “If the fur is brown, then the brown rabbits will have better survivability in the brown desert environment because they will have the advantage of camouflage.” This is testable in the simulation by removing and introducing appropriate variables to the scenario and recording the results.

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Assessment

Example Exit Ticket/Wrap up Questions:

Experiment with environments which produce a stable population of bunnies, a population that dies out, and a population that takes over the world. Document and report.
Track genes through multiple generations using pedigrees.
Describe which traits change the survivability of an organism in different environments.

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Differentiation

Students that might have difficulty with the program can be given more time with the play portion, but guided by the teacher to achieve content acquisition. Guided questions should follow some sort of “What happens when you…” and “What do we call…” Having the words and effects of the changes on the screen help many learners gain content through context.

The simulations themselves have translated version, text to speech and other accommodations built in.

Remediation

Extension/Enrichment

Students looking to extend their learning can follow these questions, or may have come up with their own.

How could you adapt this scenario to represent your environmental factors (localized)?
What inferences can we draw about fitness and environmental pressures on populations?

We could encourage students to develop a hypothesis and means to test the hypothesis, even if time and resources limit the possibility of testing their theory. Lifelong learning might mean that they are not able to finish this test for some time, or it could be saved for next year’s project.