Adaptation in Beaks
A Biology Partnership Lesson Plan
Group Members:
Michelle LeBlanc Kelly-Chipley High School
Todd Kallenbach- Freeport High School
Sam Ezell- Milton High School
Shane Tucker-Pace High
Lesson Length in Minutes: 55 Minutes
Course Level: 9-12 General Biology and Honors Biology
Motivation:
Pretest- Also in this folder
Before the laboratory investigation, students will be given a pretest that will
be used to gauge their understanding of natural selection and adaptation.
Students will have 5 minutes to answer the questions to the best of their
ability. The pre-test may be given directly before the laboratory activity
occurs or during the prior class in addition to be assigned as pre-lab
homework the day before.
Students will be prompted with the following question:
How do adaptations in individuals affect natural selection amongst
populations?
Needed Materials & Set-Up:
Materials Needed:
Aluminum Pie Plates (6)
Plastic Petri dishes (24)
Sunflower Seeds (Shelled- .5 Kg)
Forceps (6)
Clothes pins (spring-type 6)
Tongs (6)
Chopsticks (6 sets of 2)
Stopwatches (6)
Plastic spoon (1) for demonstration
Plastic Knife (1) for demonstration
Dissecting needle (1) for demonstration
Pinto Beans (250 g) for demonstration
Copy of Procedure sheet for each group
Set-Up
Students will work in groups of five at lab tables on the sides of the classroom as
shown in the diagram below.
Materials will be placed on lab table at front of classroom for easy access by
members of each group.
Community Resource:
Invite Environmental scientist to speak to students about beak variations amongst
bird populations.
Classroom/Lab Set-up
Group 1
Group 6
Student Desks
Group 2
Group 5
Group 4
Group 3
Teacher Desk and Materials Table
Outcomes
Dimensions of K-12 Science Education Standards:
Disciplinary Core Ideas LS4: Biological evolution: Unity and diversity
Scientific and engineering practices: 1.4 : Analyzing and interpreting data
1.8: Obtaining, evaluating, and communicating information
Crosscutting: 2.6: Structure and Function
Next Generation Sunshine State Standards:
SC.912.L.15.13: Describe the conditions required for natural selection, including:
overproduction of offspring, inherited variation, and the struggle to survive,
which result in differential reproductive success.
SC 912.N.1.1:
A-Scientific inquiry is a multifaceted activity; The process of science include
the formulation of scientifically investigable questions, construction of
investigations into those questions, the collection of appropriate data, the
evaluation of the meaning of those data, and the communication of this
evaluation.
B- The process of science frequently do not correspond to the traditional
portrayal of the “scientific method”
C- Scientific argumentation is a necessary part of scientific inquiry and plays
an important role in the generation and validation of scientific knowledge
D- Scientific knowledge is based on observation and inference; it is important
to recognize that these are very different things. Not only does science require
creativity in its methods and processes, but also in its questions and explanations.
SC.912.N.1.6: Describe how scientific inferences are drawn from scientific
observations and provide examples from the content being studied.
Content Literacy Standards: Writing standard: Science and Technical Subjects:
Research to build and present knowledge
Production and Distribution of Writing
Specific Learning Outcomes: After conducting the lab, students will correctly
produce a chart of the data that was collected and use the chart to determine
accurate averages.
Students will interpret the averages gained from the chart to recommend which
beak is best suited for survival.
Students will be assessed using the attached rubric, which evaluates them on
participation, experimental hypothesis, data collection, and development of a
conclusion. Acceptable level is 75% or higher overall. Students will also be
assessed on their written paragraph. Paragraph will be considered acceptable at
75% or higher.
Through the given questions (See question section #1), students will demonstrate
their knowledge of the terms by writing a cohesive paragraph relating beak
structure to food selection.
Presentation and Participation:
Cognitive: Conversations
Open class with a conversation of how differences in tools can affect the feeding
efficiency, and therefore the survival, of a species.
Other: Identifying Similarities and Differences: Point to posters around the
classroom (or project appropriate pictures on the screen) that show different shapes
of birds’ beaks and ask students which beaks are designed for which types of
feeding behavior.
Behavior: Demonstration and Discussion
Teacher will hold up a petri dish of pinto beans and have students come to front of
class and illustrate how many seeds can be scooped up with a spoon, a knife, and a
dissecting needle. Have students predict what would happen to a bird with its beak
shaped like each tool if it depended on seeds for food.
Behavior: Discussion and Questioning, Practice
Ask students to select the type of tool that is best suited for feeding on these bean
seeds. Have students give examples of other tools that would work more
efficiently in this situation.
Review previous chapter sections on adaptations and ask students to give examples
of artificial selection, natural selection, adaptation, fitness, and heritability.
Application/ Process: Project
A. Separate students into groups of five and hand out Procedure sheet.(shown
below)
Procedure:
1. For each group, gather the following materials:
Aluminum pan with sunflower seeds
Four petri dishes
Four different tools or “beaks” (forceps, tongs, clothes pin, chopsticks)
Stopwatch
2. Choose one member of the group to be the recorder and timer. The other
members will be the “birds”.
3. Construct a Data Table with spaces to record three trials of each tool and an
average of all the trials. (see sample below)
BEAK TOOL #1
BEAK TOOL #2
BEAK TOOL #3
BEAK TOOL #4
TRIAL #
1
2
3
AVERAGE
4. Run three timed trials of 30 seconds each for each tool. Pick up as many seeds
as you can during the 30 seconds (using only the tool you are given) and place
them in a petri dish. At the end of each trial, count the number of seeds “eaten”
and record the number in the column for that tool.
5. After the third trial, calculate the average for each “beak” and record the
averages in your data table.
Questions:
(3 higher order—analysis, synthesis, evaluation)
1. Use the terms beak, seeds, natural selection, adaptation, and fitness to
describe what happened in the lab.
2. Explain why you think changes occur over time in a species. Defend your
answers using the results of this activity.
3. If the seeds in this activity were the real food source of a bird, use the
information you have learned from the text to predict what sort of beak a bird
would need to evolve to successfully eat those seeds.
Optional Questions:
4. What changes would you recommend to the activity in order to demonstrate
how each “beak” might be best adapted to another environment?
5. Evaluate your recommendations (in Q#4) against other students’
recommendations.
Reflection: At the end of the laboratory investigation, a class discussion will take
place. A class survey will take place and students will be asked which tool worked
better for them when they were picking up sunflower seeds. Secondly, students
will be asked which tool would allow them to better survive in an environment
with only small seeds similar to sunflower seeds, and what would the expect the
population of seed eating individuals to look like. This discussion should only last
two minutes.
Afterward the class discussion, students will be given a posttest. Students will be
allowed five minutes to answer the questions. If there is not time after the
investigation, students can be assigned the posttest as homework or as a bell ringer
activity the following day.
The post test will be scored and returned by the next class period, during which
correct answers will be discussed so as to clear up any misconceptions and/or
confusion.
Safety: For this lab, a standard lab safety discussion should suffice. Discussion
should center on the use of laboratory equipment in a proper manner. A brief
discussion regarding the sharp instruments and the lab being a place of
professional educational work and a complete lack of “horseplay” should be
included.
Transformative:
(Accommodations for at least 2 special needs students)
Special Needs Student #1: This student is classified ESOL having Spanish as his
first language. We will provide a printed Spanish version of all written materials
for him. Teacher will also model the correct procedure for collecting seeds with
his “beak”.
Special Needs Student #2:
This student is visually impaired, although not blind. We will provide large-print
written materials for this student, and have the student who is the recorder and
timer to give verbal descriptions of the data being recorded in the chart.
Utilize:
1. The Pre-Test/Post-Test Challenge. Comparison of Pre-Test and Post-Test will
be the first area of concern. If students do not show measurable improvement,
then there may be one or more problems with the Lesson Plan:
a. Pre-Test and Post-Test may not fit the activity closely. If so, we can
revise them to more closely match the lessons learned in the activity.
b. The activity may fail to demonstrate the concepts explored in the Pre­
/Post-Test in a way that the students can comprehend. If so, we may need to adjust
the activity (or the Teacher’s narrative regarding the activity) until the concepts are
more clearly represented.
c. The higher order questions may not challenge the students to effectively
grapple with the information to achieve a deeper understanding of the content. If
this is the case, we will need to work to ask more helpful questions and guide the
students to better understand the content.
2. The Standards Challenge. We will need to assess the clarity of the coverage of
our selected standards. We will need to ask the following questions and make the
necessary adjustments:
a. Do the pre- and post-tests conform well to our standards, and does good
performance on the pre- and post-tests correlate to mastery of the standards by our
students? This would be measure in the longer term (such as a chapter or unit
test)? If the pre- or post-tests are found to be inconsistent with our standards, we
would need to make adjustments to the questions to more closely align with the
selected standards.
b. Does the activity properly direct students to a deeper mastery of the
selected standards? In this activity the key standard is quite broad (the conditions
required for natural selection), yet this activity focuses more narrowly on the
varied fitness of different adaptations. We would need to limit our critique to the
narrow focus, rather than whether the activity covers the entire standard.
c. Do the higher order questions direct students to a deeper understanding of
the standards? If the higher order questions do not aid in the students’
understanding of the selected standards, we need to edit or rewrite them to fit the
standards better.
3. The Time Challenge. From pre-test to post-test, there are several components
in this activity. The sum total of these components may take longer than the
allotted time. Included in our plan is the flexibility to move the first component to
the previous day and the last component to the following day. Also every teacher
(along with his or her students and his or her school) creates a unique culture that
moves at its own pace. We must be flexible to adapt this plan to each individual
classroom’s culture.
4. The Facilities Challenge. While we can anticipate that the most teachers can
quickly fit the activity to their own space or facilities limitations, there may be
spaces that require more changes to the activity. [Personal comment from Shane
Tucker: At Pace High School, we have a common lab that many science teachers
share and reserve when needed. It has the well-known, two-students sitting, fourstudents standing, slate tables that are perfect for this activity. However, if the lab
is reserved, I’d have to use my classroom, which has slanted individual desks that
would make this activity challenging. I can imagine students crowded around a
single desk frantically grasping for their “food” while some seeds slide or roll to
the downhill side of the pie plate! We might need to push the desks to the walls
and get on the floor. It would be no big problem, but would certainly need to be
pre-planned.]
5. Strengths: This lesson encourages higher level thinking as described in Bloom’s
taxnonomy.