Biology lesson plan: Natural selection and adaptation

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Planning notes for this lesson

Prerequisite skills to check: inherited variation within a population and how traits are passed on (MS-LS3, MS-LS4-4); reading a simple data table or bar graph across generations; the difference between an individual and a population.

Key vocabulary: natural selection, adaptation, population, heritable trait, variation, selective pressure, allele frequency, differential survival, reproductive success, generation.

Warm-up idea: Show a made-up table of beak sizes in a bird population before and after three drought years and ask: did any single bird's beak change? Then what did change?

Exit ticket idea: Students write a short claim-evidence-reasoning explanation, using a small multi-generation data set, of how one environmental difference (for example temperature range, a geographic barrier or a new predator) changed how common a heritable trait became in a population.

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