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Autumn 1

Evolution and Inheritance

What do you already know about evolution?

We have been learning:

To know how Mary Anning, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace developed their ideas on Evolution.
To know that fossils provide information about living things that inhabited the Earth millions of years ago.
To know that living things produce offspring of the same kind, but normally offspring vary and are not identical to their parents.
To know that animals and plants can adapt to suit their environments, leading to an evolutionary change.
To know that variations occur within a species and this is sometimes due to selective breeding.
To know how animals and plants are adapted to suit their environment in different ways.

Bird Beak Investigation

All of the class took part in a bird beak investigation to see the effects of natural selection. They were each given either a cocktail stick, a peg, a bulldog clip or a pair of tweezers to use as their 'beak'. They then had 30seconds to feed using their beak. Different food sources provided different amounts of calories. After 30seconds, the children then had to work out how many calories they had eaten and then had to work out if they had died, survived or reproduced. After completing the game over a few generations, the children were able to work out which beak was best suited to 'Clippy Island' and which bird beak would have evolved.

Challenge

Why were Mary Anning's discoveries different to Charles Darwin's and Alfred Wallace's?