Hobbies And Interests
Children's Evolution Books
While someone in high school may have the proper reading comprehension to understand Charles Darwin's "Origin of Species," younger children usually can't grasp the concept. Ask your high school students to incorporate their reading skills and artistic skills to make books summarizing the information in "Origin of Species" for children. Ask the students to create illustrations to describe the information in the book further. There is a lot of information in "Origin of Species," so impose a page limit you find suitable. Tell the students to select the information they include in the children's book to match the word limit.
Discovering Tiktaalik
It is a common belief that life originated in the ocean. Over a steady process of evolution, organisms started to crawl onto land to find new food sources and escape predators. Tiktaalik, a fish that is 375 million years old, is most likely one of the first fish to evolve into a tetrapod (a four-footed vertebrate). Provide your class with picture copies of tiktaalik's fossil and related reading. Ask the children to draw their idea of what tiktaalik looked like when it was alive. Have the children include a brief report that details why archeologists believe tiktaalik is one of the first land-roaming animals to emerge from the ocean.
Human Evolutionary Chain
While it may be easy for your students to picture evolution occurring in animals, they may not comprehend that humans themselves evolved. Give them a firm reminder that humans are subjects of evolution as well by assigning a chart project for human evolution. Ask the children to collect pictures of different fossils in the human line of evolution. The children will label each image, place it in a chart that shows the evolutionary progression of humans and provide information on each fossil. The children should tell you the time period for the fossil organism and give a brief description of its way of life.
Animal Displacement
Evolution takes place to give animals the best chance of living in their surroundings. Either the animal will change to suit its new habitat or it will fail. Have your students choose a geographical location devoid of many humans. Tell the children to research the location and record information, such as the average temperature, landscape, food sources and predators. Have the children choose an animal that lives in a very different landscape. The children will write a report on what would happen if the animal moved to the new location (for example, moving a polar bear to Brazil). The children should include the evolutionary changes necessary to keep the animal alive in the new environment.