When introducing evolution I like to use the station teaching model. I set up stations for collaboration, independent and teacher assisted or direct instruction. Each station is broken down into about 20 minute rotations and can span multiple days depending on your schedule, I am on a block schedule but have done this with traditional scheduling and it works well.
Collaborative: Students work together to examine skulls and the similarities and difference between them from an evolutionary perspective. Students will also color code homologous structures in the station.
This TED talk is one of my favorite to show students. It does a great job explaining how organisms evolve and how our own skin pigmentation is evidence for evolution. I use the video with this Video Worksheet to introduce evolution.
This week my students enjoyed a fun biochemistry lab where they had to examine the stomach contents of a victim to determine where the victim had his last meal. Through this investigations students practiced procedure writing, lab safety and used chemical indicators to test for carbohydrates (glucose and starch), lipids and proteins.
This week as the students were learning about macromolucules I decided to do something a little different to get students outside on a beautiful day. I thought it would be fun to have students create sidewalk chalk drawings of macromolecules instead of doing a poster. The students loved this activity. I even saw other students who were not in a Biology class posing and taking pictures with the designs after school.
