Lesson Plans

Lesson Plan

In this lesson, students combine art and science to interpret and illustrate graphical art. In this way, students will building understanding of the power of data infused art to convey the "bigger picture" of climate change.  "Hot issues such as climate change may not be the subjects of contention within the scientific community, but it seems clear that the science is not being communicated in a way that has the necessary impact. Although art cannot directly communicate science or change minds, it can create a space for dialogue around difficult issues" - Kieniewicz

Lesson Plan

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.

Lesson Plan

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.

Lesson Plan

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.

Lesson Plan

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.

Lesson Plan

This lesson consists of a cross disciplinary activity incorporating aspects of wave characteristics from Physics, movement traits from Biology, and evaluating locomotion design from Engineering. Students can be introduced to the idea by showing the video Arthropod Locomotion: Engineering from the shapeoflife.org or other videos of animals that exhibit wave-like characteristics during motion. Class discussion can begin by analyzing the necessity to move efficiently and how moving in a wave-like manner could be beneficial.

Lesson Plan

There are three separate lessons here based on questions.A list of questions about the characteristics of chordates to use after viewing the video Chordates: We're All Family.A Shape of Life Chordata worksheet. Students make sketches and write short answers to questions about the amazing world of chordates. This was created by Rachel Miller from Science from Scratch.A Powerpoint with questions to use while watching the video Chordates: We're All Family.

Lesson Plan

In this lesson students make a guess as to what was the first animal. The class watches the Sponge video from the shapeoflife.org and writes down what evidence they saw that sponges were the first animals. Then the class discusses what evidence they need to figure out what might have been the first animal. They watch the scientist video “Mitchell Sogin, Evolutionary Biologist: Proof of the First Animal” and write down the evidence that is presented for the sponge being the first animal.

Lesson Plan

In this lesson students engage in the practice of science by observing behaviors using Shape of Life videos with the audio and closed captioning turned off.

Lesson Plan

A list of questions about the characteristics of Molluscs to use after viewing the video Molluscs: the Survival Game.