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Blog week 9

What did you learn?

This week in the lab, we did an activity called: Preying on Beans. The point of this game is to demonstrate the process of adaptation and selection. During the game, we acted like predators searching for the prey (beans) with three different traits. We were offered a spoon, a fork, and a stick. Once the person had the least amount of beans, their trait (utensil) was changed. I had a fork and I made it to the second round before I died off. The fork was not helpful for me compared to the spoon, so once I died I switched over to a spoon. This is showing how evolution and adaptation occur during natural selection.


I tied this to the NGSS standard of cross-cutting concepts to realize that this is cause and effect, as well as stability and change. Because the predator got less food than the others, the effect was changing how they hunted their prey.



Applying to the future:

This is a great activity for kids to be able to understand how evolution and adaptation occur. It is explained throughout the activity when they are handed the unfair utensil. It is also fun for the students to be able to grab the beans to see how much of the prey is eaten in that certain environment. Connecting with the environment, and changing the surface for your students each round would also be a creative way to show how the environment can affect an animal's lifestyle.

Comments

  1. Ali McDermottMarch 23, 2023 at 8:08 AM

    Hi Amber! I thought this activity was a good representation of natural selection. I think it would be fun to do this activity outside and putting the beans in the grass. This would make it harder to find the prey and give a more accurate representation of what it is like.

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  2. Methods to Science- Elle ChristouMarch 23, 2023 at 12:03 PM

    Hi Amber! I enjoyed that beans activity too. It was a great representation and it was very information but engaging. I like changing out the different tools to grab the beans. I like how you mentioned something about the surface because I was thinking about the same thing. One of my ideas was using a sandbox to do this activity because some tools might be harder to use in the sand.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Abby BorthMarch 26, 2023 at 12:29 PM

    Hi Amber! I also enjoyed this activity and think it would be a good lab to use with students in the future. It was a good representation of natural selection and helped me better understand it in a fun way. I wonder if there is a way to also make different groups have different environments and discuss how this affected the natural selection.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Lexi MooreMarch 29, 2023 at 8:26 PM

    Hi amber! I really liked this activity as well. It was super fun and engaging. I thought that the game helped me to better understand the complex concept behind it. I think that it would be a cool idea to make the environment of each table different to see how that plays a role in the game!

    ReplyDelete

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