This resource is explicitly designed to build towards this science and engineering practice.
Comments about Including the Science and Engineering Practice
To help students analyze and interpret the data they could graph it instead of just “write what they feel the numbers tell them”. They can then compare it to real data from the Galapagos finches on Daphne Major that can be found in the at the very end of the activity (Finch Beak Data Sheet.) It may be helpful for the teacher to keep all the data as suggested and make a graph on a spreadsheet to show the classes their data versus total data versus the real-world data from Daphne Major. Students can then write a paragraph summarizing the comparison.
This resource is explicitly designed to build towards this science and engineering practice.
Comments about Including the Science and Engineering Practice
The directions ask students to describe what happened to the Clipbird populations and what they think caused the changes. One way to do this is in the form of a Darwinian Explanation where students describe what happened with the population of clipbirds, citing the variation in the beginning population, what caused differential survival rates including the selective advantage, survival and heredity and then how the population changed over time including the variation in the final population.