Colorful echinoderms

lesson plans

Organized by Phyla

Lesson Plans

  • Darwins Tree
    Lesson Plan
    A Pipe Cleaner Model of Animal Evolution
    The evolutionary tree shown here was drawn by Charles Darwin, a scientist who lived more than 150 years ago. It was Darwin, and another man named Alfred Russel Wallace that came up with the idea of natural selection, which is one of the ways that life evolves. Darwin wasn’t the first person to suggest that life evolves, the idea had been around for a while, but he was one of the first to use evidence to explain his observations about life.

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  • Lesson Plan
    Cambrian Explosion
    In this lesson, students will watch a short film about the Cambrian Explosion and the extraordinary fossils of the Burgess Shale. Students will address preconceptions and misconceptions about early Cambrian life, and complete a timeline activity that will enable them to better appreciate just how recently—relatively speaking—multicellular life evolved on Earth.

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General Animals

  • Lesson Plan
    Preconceptions about Evolutionary Trees
    In this lesson, students will address misconceptions about phylogenetic trees before completing a modeling activity to give them a better understanding of how trees are used to model evolutionary relationships.

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Paleontology

  • Lesson Plan
    Who Was "Hunter Eve?"
    The paleontological evidence of the first animal to hunt is tiny trails that have been fossilized in rocks. To start this lesson, students will consider the tracks and traces left by modern animals and what they can learn about an animal from its tracks. They then think about which animal might have been the first hunter. The class considers what it takes to be a hunter and what kind of evidence can we use to figure out what was the first hunter. Students write their ideas in their science notebooks and the teacher shares the ideas with the entire class.

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  • Lesson Plan
    Ages Of Rock
    This collection consists of six lesson plans designed to help students construct an explanation of the geologic time scale based on personal connections, science concepts and nature of science ideas.

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  • Lesson Plan
    The Secrets of Fossils
    In this lesson students make connections between fossils and modern day organisms. Using the information about the Cambrian Explosion, they explore theories about how and why organisms diversified. Students hypothesize what evidence might be helpful to connect fossil organisms to modern organisms to show evolutionary connections. Students use three videos from shapeoflife.org.

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