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After reviewing for and taking our DNA quest, we spent the remainder of the week discussing the basics of evolution. Students were introduced to the concepts of adaptations, evolution, and natural selection. We discussed the voyage of Charles Darwin and the important discoveries that he made on the Galapagos Islands. We spent two days in class doing a "Designer Animal Activity." In this activity, students were given four environments to choose from, and they were required to design an animal with the adaptations necessary to survive and thrive in the chosen environment. Students had to consider what their animal would eat, how it would defend itself, maintain body temperature, care for its young, find shelter, etc. After designing everything, students had to choose a card that determined how their environment had changed (volcano eruptions, global warming, meteorites, shift in planetary rotation, etc), and then decide whether their animal still had the right adaptations to survive. On Monday, students will present their "designer animals" to the class. Next week, students will be exposed to several examples of natural selection that occur everyday, and they will do a "peppered moth" lab to simulate how natural selection occurs.