| Lesson Title (Description) |
Grade Level |
Lesson Type |
Discovering the great tree of life
This short video introduces basic concepts in phylogenetics and provides a model to help understand lineage-splitting.
This resource is available from the Peabody Museum of Natural History |
6-8 |
Video |
Interactive investigation: The arthropod story
This interactive investigation delves into the amazing world of the arthropods and examines their success and their evolutionary constraints. |
6-8 |
Web activity |
Nuts and bolts classification: Arbitrary or not?
Students working in teams classify furniture, share their categories and rationales, then note how their different schemes are perfectly logical and useful, but they vary and are completely arbitrary. They then see how living organisms are classified, and note how these natural groupings reflect the same ancestral relationships in the same nested hierarchies, regardless of the different criteria used. This concept is exemplified using primate phylogenetic trees. |
6-8 |
Classroom activity |
Similarities and differences: Understanding homology and analogy
This interactive investigation explains what homologies and analogies are, how to recognize them, and how they evolve. |
6-8 |
Tutorial |
