Classroom Resources

In this activity, students examine concepts about the evolution of human bipedality explored in the short film Great Transitions: The Origin of Humans. They create their own trackway of footprints and compare it to a trackway of fossil footprints.

This activity guides the analysis of a published scientific figure from a study that investigated evolutionary changes in seed-eating finches after a drought.

This activity guides the analysis of a published scientific figure from a study that tested how individual fish responded to an artificial model of a fish school.

In this activity, students formulate a hypothesis and collect and analyze real research data about how quickly natural selection can act on specific traits in a population as a result of predation. It is accompanied by a short video that describes the experiment this activity is based on.

This activity supports concepts covered in the film The Making of a Theory. Students develop their nonfiction reading comprehension by analyzing excerpts from texts written by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace.

In this activity, students explore the phenomenon of convergent evolution presented in the short film The Origin of Species: Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree. They build and interpret phylogenetic trees to infer how certain adaptations evolved among the Anole lizard populations of the Caribbean.

In this activity, students analyze and graph data taken from a population of Galápagos finches before and after a major drought.

This activity explores the concepts and research presented in the short film The Origin of Species: The Making of a Theory, which documents the epic voyages of naturalists Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace.

This activity explores the concepts and research presented in the short film The Origin of Species: The Beak of the Finch, which documents the main findings from four decades of investigations on the evolution of the Galápagos finches.

This activity supports concepts covered in the short film The Day the Mesozoic Died. Students analyze graphs and data on pollen grains and fern spores to form a picture of the living landscape before and after the mass extinction that marked the end of the age of the dinosaurs.

This activity explores the research described in the short film The Day the Mesozoic Died. The film traces the uncovering of key clues revealing that an asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, triggering a mass extinction.

This activity supports concepts covered in the short filmThe Day the Mesozoic Died by replicating observations and measurements made by researchers of fossilized protists, called foraminifera (or forams), below and above the K-T boundary.