Week 9

What did you learn this week?

    This week we talked and learned about natural selection and the different traits of predators and how different traits can work better for different predators and how those dominant traits are passed down. Natural selection in my own words would be survival of the fittest and seeing what species survive and what traits get passed down when faced with hard times like natural disasters, invasive species, etc. 

Are you able to relate what you learned to what you already knew?

    

    I am able to relate what we learned to what I already know because I already had some background knowledge on what natural selection is. We went more into depth about natural selection and learned some more of the causes of it and what it can look like. We also went around and everyone got to share what they think natural selection is in their own words so it was interesting to hear what everyone had learned about natural selection. 

How can you apply what you've learned to your teaching in the future?

    Some things that I can apply to my future classroom would be the activities that we did in class today. We used 100 white beans, 100 red beans, and 100 black beans that were used as preys. We then put them in an "environment" which for our group was a bin lid. We then were each given a different utensil that was used as the "predator". The utensils were a fork, a spoon, or a popsicle stick. We were given 30 seconds to use our utensil to scoop as many of the beans out of the lid as we could. Once the time was up we counted how many beans, or "prey" we got. Then, whoever had the least amount had to trade their utensil for one of the ones that got more beans. In my group, the popsicle stick got the least so I traded for a fork. We then continued until we all had forks. This activity shows how the better or more dominant traits are passed down to future generations. The pictures below are from this activity.