Objective
This is a unit for 1st and 2nd grade classrooms and will address the Next Generation Science Standards 1-LS3-1 Heredity: Inheritance and Variation of Traits, 2-LS4-1 Biological Evolution, and the Common Core State Standards for Speaking and Listening and for Writing. My ultimate goal is for students to be exposed to the ideas that evolution does not happen in a generation or two nor do adaptations spring forth all at once as they did when Peter Parker was bitten by the radioactive spider and became Spiderman; it takes many, many generations to occur. To do this we will discuss the basics of natural selection and how this process contributes to evolution. We will discuss how Pokémon “evolve”. We will investigate how whales evolved from land animals, who themselves had evolved from water animals, and how their bodies adapted to their environment. We will then discuss how birds evolved from dinosaurs. We will revisit Pokémon and discuss how they don’t really evolve. For our culminating activity, students will choose a Pokémon (or other organism), design adaptations that their creatures will evolve, and will identify why those adaptations were key to the survival of the species. Students will also provide transitional forms to show how their creature changed over time.
It is important to note that this unit is not designed to prove the truth of evolution nor to counter claims based on religious beliefs or “Intelligent Design”, it is intended only to give students information, based on scientific fact, as to how evolution occurs in the natural world. If students are playing Pokémon Go and watching the shows and movies that use the words evolution and evolve, they need to understand that the pop cultural definition of evolution is not the same as the scientific fact.
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