TITLE
Essential Science for Teachers: Life Science: Session 5. Variation, Adaptation, and Natural Selection

CLIP DESCRIPTION
Students use B. rappa to study plant variation in height. The questions posed to students are, "What causes the variation in plant height? What are some advantages of tall and short plants?" The students collect data and look at the mean, mode, etc.

INSTRUCTIONAL CATEGORY/
CRITERION
[Category 2 Criterion C ]
Building on Student Ideas
Assisting Teachers in Identifying Their Students’ Ideas
Does the activity include questions and/or tasks to help teachers identify what their students think about familiar situations and/or phenomena related to the learning goals before these goals are introduced?

PROGRAM DESCRIPTION
What causes variation among a population of living things? How can variation in one generation influence the next generation? In this session, variation in a population will be examined as the “raw material” upon which natural selection acts.

RIGHTS
Corporation for Public Broadcasting. All Rights Reserved..

PUBLISHER
Annenberg/CPB