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Animal Adaptations and Engineering Design: 01 Form and Function

Animal Adaptations and Engineering Design: 01 Form and Function
Contributors
Beyond Benign
Beyond Benign, Inc.
Annette Sebuyira
Retired K-12 Educator | Beyond Benign, Inc.
A slide that reads 3rd Grade Green Chemistry: Animal Adaptations &Engineering Design
Summary
In this lesson, students will take an active role in understanding adaptations and evolution as they evaluate the effectiveness of various bird beaks for different kinds of food. This lesson will set the stage for the rest of the unit as students learn that function is the intersection of biology, chemistry, and design.
Keyword Tags
Animal Adaptations
Form and Function
Bioengineering
Evolution
File (PDF, PPT, image, etc)
form_and_function-1-updated.docx
Link to external
How Beaks are Adapted to what Bird Video
Book on Bird beaks
Bird Beaks pdf
Biomimicry Kits
Learning Goals/Student Objectives
• Understand that adaptations have specific functions.
• Investigate animal adaptations.
• Collect data and graph results.
Object Type
Laboratory experiment
Lecture or course slides/notes (e.g., PPT, Prezi, PDF)
Activities/Technology (e.g., in-class activities, online games, hands-on activities/manipulatives, outreach, virtual tools, etc.)
Lesson summaries
Assessments
Audience
Elementary School
Common pedagogies covered
Collaborative/cooperative learning
Context-based learning
Hands-on learning
Problem-based learning
Student-centered learning
Green Chemistry Principles
Use of Renewable Feedstocks
U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
Safety Precautions, Hazards, and Risk Assessment
Great care should be taken while handling small objects, to avoid loss of material.
Teacher Recommendations or Piloting Data (if available)
• If the Beaks book is unavailable, the video Bird Feeding Adaptations: How Beaks are Adapted to What Birds Eat works well as an alternative and can be found in the links.
• The supplies listed for the student activity are meant to be examples of what to use. Feel free to substitute if you have other supplies more readily available in your classroom! Change the supplies list on the student sheet to clarify for your students.
• The experiment is written so that the teacher keeps time for the class. You may instead wish for students to keep time themselves. In this case, change the Student Lab Report to reflect this change and provide timers for each team. Alternatively, students may keep time using an analog clock mounted somewhere visible.
NGSS Standards, if applicable
3-LS3-2 Use evidence to support the explanation that traits can be influenced by the environment.
3-LS4-2 Use evidence to construct an explanation for how the variations in characteristics among individuals of the same species may provide advantages in surviving, finding mates, and reproducing.
3-LS4-3 Construct an argument with evidence that in a particular environment some organisms can survive well, some survive less well, and some cannot survive.
3-ESS3-1 Engineers improve existing technologies or develop new ones to increase their benefits, decrease known risks, and meet societal demands.

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Annette Sebuyira
Published on
Moderation state
Published
Time required (if applicable)
30-minutes
Related Learning Objects
Animal Adaptations and Engineering Design Unit Overview
Animal Adaptations and Engineering Design: 02 ABC’s of Biomimicry
Animal Adaptations and Engineering Design: 03 Animal Homes
Animal Adaptations and Engineering Design: Lesson 04: Building with Biomimicry
Creative Commons License
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.