2/12

Students presented their "designer animals" to the class on Monday. It was interesting to see the unique adaptations that students created 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 and bacteria, tusk-less 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. 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. Natural selection taught us that if you have the best traits (like being camolflagued, in this case), you will survive and pass your genes on to your offspring.

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 22nd!