Goodbye Option D: Evolution II

Continuing from my last post, please see below for:

• D3 Human evolution
• D4 The Hardy–Weinberg principle
• D5 Phlogeny and systematics

 

D3 Human evolution

The section starts with a section on carbon dating. I have found this activity to be an excellent inquiry based study. Perhaps use in a flipped lesson.

When looking at the major anatomical features that define humans as primates I have used this link and the embedded video. Great way to start.

This could possibly be followed with these videos that take you through the migration of humans and touch upon cultural evolution (syllabus point D.3.9)

When lo0king at trends illustrated by fossils, take a look HERE and also HERE. You may want to take advantage of student interest by sharing this PBS video (51.27 minutes) and this hands-on human evolution video that can also be found on the PBS website.

Sure you can easily find plenty of resources and scaffold inquiry based learning around them, the above represent a small collection that I have used in the past.

If you go to NewScientist TV you can watch a collection of videos headlined with the Top three mysteries of human evolution. There are more resources here too.

D4 The Hardy–Weinberg principle

The video I show my students I cannot share for copyright reasons. However, a quick look and you find plenty. I am a fan of The Penguin Prof channel on YouTube, though some find her a little taxing. A quick search and sure you will find a video that suits your teaching.

D5 Phlogeny and systematics [Cladistics can be found in the in new syllabus… 5.4]

A great way to start the section is with the following video from The Wellcome trust

[youtube id=”H6IrUUDboZo”]

If you wish to integrate the use of some cladistics software into your classroom then the National Centre of Biotechnology Information (NCBI) has the following, BLAST, that explores the alignment of two protein sequences. Instructions and guidance for this can be found on page 596 of the ‘BIOLOGY course companion’ (Allot, Mindorff) as it is now part of Option B – Biotechnology and Bioinformatics.

And to clarify one common misconception:

A cladogram shows a branching pattern  and the length of the branches do not represent time or relative amount of change, simply shows evolutionary relationships within a Clade.

A phylogram is a phylogentic tree that has branch lengths proportional to the amount of character change.

 

I hope you find the resources of help in the last few weeks of the old syllabus. If its too late to impact your teaching, perhaps share with your students.