2/13

Students presented their "designer animals" to the class on Monday. They were interesting to see because students came up with some very unique adaptations for their animals! For the remainder of the week, we used examples to reinforce the idea of natural selection (white lizards, quiet crickets, resistant insects, tuskless elephants, etc.). We even did a "peppered moth simulation lab" after the reviewing the controversial experiment that was done in Manchester, England with pale and dark peppered moths. According to the story, the pale variety of moths were more common before the 1850's, because they blended in with the lichen-covered trees. As the industrial revolution began in the 1850's, the trees became covered in smoke and soot, and gradually, the dark variety of moth became more common. In our lab, we used two different colored backgrounds to represent the non-polluted (pale) and the polluted (dark) tree trunks. Small circles were cut out to represent pale and dark moths. Students became predators (birds), and had to use tweezers pick up as many "moths" off of each background as they could in 20 seconds. While some students struggled as predators (I know it was difficult!), others excelled!

Next week we will wrap up our evolution chapter. We will discuss other evidence for evolution (the fossil record, comparative structures, vestigial structures, and plate tectonics). We will also do a lab that will test the students' ability to determine the relative age of fossils. We will have our chapter test on Monday, February 23rd!