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    Biological Evolution: Unity and Diversity

Students who demonstrate understanding can:

Performance Expectations

  1. Use mathematical representations to support explanations of how natural selection may lead to increases and decreases of specific traits in populations over time. MS-LS4-6

    Clarification Statement and Assessment Boundary

A Peformance Expectation (PE) is what a student should be able to do to show mastery of a concept. Some PEs include a Clarification Statement and/or an Assessment Boundary. These can be found by clicking the PE for "More Info." By hovering over a PE, its corresponding pieces from the Science and Engineering Practices, Disciplinary Core Ideas, and Crosscutting Concepts will be highlighted.

Science and Engineering Practices

Disciplinary Core Ideas

Crosscutting Concepts

By clicking on a specific Science and Engineering Practice, Disciplinary Core Idea, or Crosscutting Concept, you can find out more information on it. By hovering over one you can find its corresponding elements in the PEs.

Planning Curriculum

Common Core State Standards Connections

Mathematics

  • 6.RP.A.1 - Understand the concept of a ratio and use ratio language to describe a ratio relationship between two quantities. (MS-LS4-6)
  • 6.SP.B.5 - Summarize numerical data sets in relation to their context. (MS-LS4-6)
  • 7.RP.A.2 - Recognize and represent proportional relationships between quantities. (MS-LS4-6)
  • MP.4 - Model with mathematics. (MS-LS4-6)

Model Course Mapping

First Time Visitors

Resources & Lesson Plans

  • More resources added each week!
    A team of teacher curators is working to find, review, and vet online resources that support the standards. Check back often, as NSTA continues to add more targeted resources.
  • Look Who's Coming to Dinner: Selection by Predation

    This HHMI Biointeractive activity is designed to supplement/support the film, The Origin of Species: Lizards in an Evolutionary Tree.  The resources is based on real measurements from a year-long field study on predation, in which Dr. Jonathan L ...

  • Natural Selection and the Development of Antibiotic Resistance-Middle School Sample Classroom Assessment

      This assessment is one of the first that was published by Achieve, the organization that coordinated the writing of the Next Generation Science Standards.  It includes a standards bundle (integration) of nine CCSS-Math standards, three ...

  • Biomimicry: The “Natural” Intersection of Biology and Engineering

    The article describes an engineering project that is to be done as the culminating event in a unit on biodiversity and adaptation.  Students apply what they have learned about these disciplinary core ideas to design products for humans that are ...

  • Habitat Change Assessment Probe

    This is one of 25 assessment probes from the book,” Uncovering Student Ideas in Science, Volume 2: 25 More Formative Assessment Probes”, by Page Keeley and co-authors. All assessment probes in this collection are aligned to a particular science conce ...

  • Translating the NGSS for Classroom Instruction

    This book was published by NSTA and was written by Rodger Bybee. It gives a brief introduction to the Framework and the Next Generation Science Standards and describes examples of how to translate these into instruction in the classroom in elementary ...

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  •  Legends of Learning - Adaptation

    In this series of games, your students will learn how and why species change over time. The Adaptation learning objective — based on NGSS and state standards — delivers improved student engagement and academic performance in your classroom, as demons...

  •  Closing the Literacy Gap w Tech Helping At-Risk Student ...

  •  Eyewitnesses to Change

    In this activity students explore recent changes in the Arctic's climate that have been observed and documented by indigenous Arctic residents. Students watch a video, take notes, and create a concept map. Students also examine and graph historical w...

  •  Tree Rings: Counting the Years of Global Warming

    This video describes the role that dendrochronology plays in understanding climate change, especially changes to high elevation environments at an upper tree line. Dendrochronologists from the Big Sky Institute sample living and dead trees, describe ...

  •  Changing Planet: Adaptation of Butterflies

    This video addresses the impact of climate change on several butterfly populations. Warming temperatures lead to shifts in location of populations of butterflies or die-offs of populations unable to adapt to changing conditions or shift to new locati...

  •  Changes in Hardiness Zones

    This animation illustrates how the hardiness zones for plants have changed between 1990 and 2006 based data from 5,000 National Climatic Data Center cooperative stations across the continental United States.

  •  Studying Eco Climatic Domains

    Activity is a Project BudBurst/National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) exploration of eco-climactic domains, as defined by NEON, by investigating characteristics of a specific domain and studying two representative plants in that domain.

  •  Summary of Natural Selection

    The Natural Selection virtual lab allows students the opportunity to investigate into how natural selection leads to the predominance of certain traits in a population, and the suppression of others. Therefore, through this virtual lab, students will...

  •  Antibiotic Resistance - Interactive Model

Planning Curriculum gives connections to other areas of study for easier curriculum creation.