Classroom Resources

In this inquiry-based activity, students engage in science practices to figure out ways environmental factors drive the natural selection and adaptation of Galápagos finches.

This hands-on activity allows students to analyze DNA sequences of Ebola viruses. Students use these sequences to track the virus’s spread during the 2013–2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

In this activity, students develop arguments for the adaptation and natural selection of Darwin’s finches, based on evidence presented in the film The Beak of the Finch.

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.

In this activity, students explore single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) that are associated with different traits in dogs to identify genes associated with those traits.

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 hands-on activity, students analyze the results of genetic crosses between stickleback fish with different traits. It complements the film Evolving Switches, Evolving Bodies.

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.

This activity allows students to collect and analyze data on the evolution of coat color in rock pocket mouse populations living on differently colored substrates.