Adapt or Don't Survive!
Students in Amber Weinberg’s Nature’s Shifting Story Class are investigating how living things adapt to changes in their environment. Today they were given an animal, an environment, and a catastrophic event: their task, to figure out if their animal could survive the event. The responses varied from the wildly creative to the unrealistic! One group had a spider that survived a flood by hanging on to a tree, another had a turtle that could outswim lava! The next task was to think of an adaptation that would help the animal survive.
They next spent some time discussing animals, such as polar bears and chameleons, to identify traits that helped them survive, and some that evolved as the animal’s environment changed. To complete the lesson, the students get to create an animal of their own. They are tasked with planning, choosing the environment, and specific traits that help their animal. Finally, they’ll get to build a model! We can’t wait to see what they come up with!