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OpenSciEd Unit 8.6: Natural Selection & Common Ancestry Teacher Edition
Author(s): NATIONAL CENTER FOR
Edition: 1
Copyright: 2022
Pages: 416
CHOOSE FORMAT
OpenSciEd Middle School science program addresses all middle school NGSS standards. This comprehensive science curriculum empowers students to question, design, investigate, and solve the world around them.
- Phenomenon Based - Centered around exploring phenomena or solving problems
- Driven by Student Questions - Storyline based on students’ questions and ideas
- Grounded in Evidence - Incremental building and revision of ideas based on evidence
- Collaborative - class and teacher figure out ideas together
- Equitable - Builds a classroom culture that values ideas and learning of all
The OpenSciEd model uses a storyline approach, introducing phenomena that anchors storylines developing disciplinary core ideas, concepts, and science/engineering practices. Students are encouraged to dive deep into key points and solve problems through five activities. Students kick off a unit of study, investigate questions, piece together the puzzle in investigations, and problematize the next set of questions to investigate.
Unit 8.6: How could things living today be connected to the things that lived long ago?
At the beginning of this unit, students hear about the surprising fossil of an ancient penguin (nicknamed “Pedro”) in a podcast from the researchers who found and identified the fossil. Students analyze data about modern penguins and Pedro to develop initial explanations for how these penguins could be connected. They brainstorm about 1) Where did all the ancient penguins go? 2) Where did all the different species of modern penguins come from? and 3) What other organisms alive today might also be connected to organisms that lived long ago?
After exploring variations in body structures and behaviors in modern penguins and ancient penguins, they also analyze data from ancient and modern species of horses, whales, and horseshoe crabs to see whether these organisms have similar patterns. Then, to figure out the cause of the changes they have observed in populations, students explore more recent cases of changing heritable trait distribution in populations and explain them by developing a model for natural selection.
In the last part of the unit, students use their model for natural selection to explain how some body structure variations in different species of modern penguins could result from natural selection and how they could descend from a common ancient ancestor penguin population. They analyze embryological data to their argument supporting how different species may be connected. Finally, students take stock of all the questions they answered in this unit and previous OpenSciEd units and identify questions they look forward to figuring out in high school.
Lesson 1: How could penguins and other things living today be connected to the things that lived long ago?
Lesson 2: How similar or different are different species of penguins?
Lesson 3: How do the body structures of other ancient penguins compare to modern penguins? Lesson 4: Why are there similarities and differences in the body structures of modern and ancient penguins?
Lesson 5: How might other living things be connected to ancient organisms?
Lesson 6: How could organisms living today be connected to organisms that lived long ago? Lesson 7: How do traits found in a population change over a shorter amount of time?
Lesson 8: How can we model what is causing the changes in the populations happening across all our case studies?
Lesson 9: How well does our General Model predict and explain the changes happening over time in a different population?
Lesson 10: Why does our General Model tend to produce different outcomes in different environmental conditions?
Lesson 11: Can we use our General Model for Natural Selection to explain changes over time in green anole lizards?
Lesson 12: Can our model explain changes over really long periods of time?
Lesson 13: Can we apply the General Model for Natural Selection over millions of years to explain how all the ancient and modern penguins are connected?
Lesson 14: What do the patterns in embryo development tell us about how things living today could be connected to the things that lived long ago?
Lesson 15: What can we explain now, and what questions do we still have?
NATIONAL CENTER FOR
OpenSciEd® was launched to improve the supply of and address the demand for high-quality, open-source, full course science instructional materials. The goals of OpenSciEd are to ensure any science teacher, anywhere, can access and download freely available, high quality, locally adaptable materials. Though the goal of providing full course materials is still a couple of years away, OpenSciEd is releasing six-week units of instruction as they are completed and externally evaluated as quality by Achieve’s Science Peer Review Panel. OpenSciEd classroom materials are an open education resource and therefore free to download, copy, use, and/or modify. You can download the instructional materials free of charge at Access Materials page on the OpenSciEd website. In an effort to lower barriers for all educators to use OpenSciEd, Kendall Hunt and OpenSciEd have partnered to sell high quality printed books, professional learning and lab kits.